


Black Stars and Endless Seas

by objectlesson



Category: One Direction (Band), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, M/M, Romance, Science Fiction, Slow Build, Star Trek - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 04:32:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: A Star Trek Original Series AU where Lt. Styles is a young science officer on his first away mission, and Louis is the headstrong ensign assigned to his security detail, and maybe they would be able to function together professionally in a normal setting, but not when their shuttlecraft crash-lands and they end up marooned together on an improbably and unfairly beautiful planet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, the wonderful Twopoppies and I have been talking about a Star Trek AU for as long as we've been friends, I think. When Reverse Bangs rolled around, it made perfect sense for her to draw Harry and Louis in Starfleet uniforms, and for me to write something about it, and honestly I couldn't have hoped for more gorgeous art to inspire this AU. Gina is amazingly talented and I had a blast writing this. 
> 
> Some notes before reading: 
> 
> People who have never watched an episode of Star Trek in their lives, NEVER FEAR! It's absolutely not necessary to have any Trek knowledge what so ever to read or enjoy this fic. Truly only the most basic understanding is required, and you likely won't even need Star Trek wiki, though it DOES exist at your disposal. 
> 
> For those of you who are familiar with Star Trek, this is a TOS era fic. I played a lot with TOS conventions in this, and it's LOADED with dorky easter eggs and jokes. Lots of philosophy, dramatics, and dated environmentalism in space. Enjoy! 
> 
> Thank you to Jen, as always, for being the most wonderful and dutiful beta. I love you very much. And lastly, THANK YOU to Gina, who did the fabulous are at this post. Check it out on tumblr!

“Ensign Tomlinson, please report to the transporter room.” 

The voice is dull and flat, even without the communication channel static further damping it, and Louis doesn’t even register that his name is being called until it’s repeated. “Ensign Tomlinson, report to the transporter room immediately.” 

He curses and drops the wrench he’s holding, prompting Zayn to shoot him a sympathetic look through the thatch of colorful wiring they’re repairing. “Forget something, Tommo?” he asks, mouth twisting up into a wry smile. A sudden dread sinks into Louis’s gut, the distinctly unpleasant sensation of suddenly remembering that he is supposed to be somewhere he decidedly is not. 

Louis frowns, dusting his hands off on the front of his uniform slacks. “Shit. I think…think the away mission I’m assigned to is today? What time is it?” 

Zayn furrows his brow. “Doesn’t matter,” he answers, using a mini torch to fuse two wires that he’s just braided together with deft fingers. “Seems you’re already late.” 

Cursing again, Louis scrambles to his feet, not without shooting a disdainful glare at Zayn over his shoulder. “Don’t fuck up anything while m’gone. It’s just a routine mission, testing for mineral samples or something before the big, official away team goes in. I’ll be back before you finish with that circuitry,” he promises, sidestepping down the hall, pretty sure that Zayn isn’t even listening to him, which he supposes is fair since they’re the same rank, and Zayn doesn’t have to answer to a fellow ensign if he doesn’t want to. 

Louis checks himself on the way to the transporter room, adjusting the sleeves of his uniform and straightening his fringe, well aware of the fact that he hardly ever looks put together enough to meet with senior officers. It’s sort of the effect of working as a low-level engineering officer, forever neck-deep in wires and machinery, and Louis doesn’t mind much, it’s just that this is his first real away mission since getting assigned to a ship, and he has no idea what to expect, how professional it will be, how in depth the briefing. He wouldn’t care much about it if he hadn't already gotten written up twice this week for minor infractions, shift tardies and the like. Louis doesn’t love Starfleet, but he also doesn’t want to get kicked off his first assignment barely two months into it. His years of miserable studying at the academy have to be worth _something_. 

Louis's busy grinding his teeth in dual anxiety and resentment when he barges into the transporter room, hands shoved into his pockets and gaze falling on two officers in science blue. 

One is a short, stocky woman with dark hair shorn close to her skull and the sort of green tint to her cheeks that makes Louis briefly wonder if she’s part Vulcan. He doesn’t wonder for very long, however, because he's staring at the other officer, gaze sweeping blatantly and unabashedly up the whole of his lanky body, and Louis…Louis really can’t afford any more infractions, so he should really just _stop_ , but there’s only so much one can do when faced with such infuriating….tallness. There are other things about him, in addition to the tallness, but Louis’s trying not to look. He might have shiny brown curls pulled up into a loose bun, which is not Starfleet regulation at _all_ , thank you very much. He might also have candy-apple green eyes, wide and glittering and as nervous as Louis feels. Or maybe they’re hazel, Louis isn’t sure. He’s trying hard to forget, anyway, and he sincerely hopes he’s not about to get all his molecules disintegrated and spliced with this man’s in a transporter beam. That sounds unsettling. 

Ensign?” the woman prompts, judgmentally quirking up a brow. 

“Right, Ensign Tomlinson, sir,” Louis mumbles, trying and failing to avoid looking at the man standing beside her, hands clasped behind his back in a classic at-ease stance, green-maybe-hazel eyes bright and blinking. (Who the fuck is Louis kidding, they’re _quite_ green, emerald and moss and moor and mountain, things that Louis misses from home and shouldn’t think about because he’s in a fucking refrigerated box hurtling through the cosmos, which is so frozen and black and unforgiving that if he and Zayn weren’t working on the warp core every day, the whole crew would be swallowed up in the vast darkness and _killed_.) (Louis may or may not hate space. The jury’s still out.)

“Thank you for joining us,” the senior officer says, sounding not at all pleased. “You’re going to be accompanying Lieutenant Styles planetside to collect and retrieve soil and vegetation samples from Delta IV, a class M planet in the Gamma system. Styles will be doing the collecting...you’re essentially there for back up,” she explains, handing him a phaser set to stun, making it explicitly clear what his role is, how _disposable_ he is in his red fucking shirt. He very nearly scoffs, but the other officer…Lieutenant _Styles_...flushes deeply and looks at the ground with such abrupt fierceness that Louis’s momentarily distracted from his own indigence. He's pink, _bright_ pink, like it embarrasses him that he’s in charge. _I could do a better job,_ Louis thinks idly, pocketing the phaser, _of commanding an away mission_. 

The thought provides him with a strange sort of placid complacency as they stand side by side and are further briefed. Like, perhaps it isn’t so awful that he has infractions stacked on him and that he’s horribly attracted to the other half of his landing party since the aforementioned half _blushes_ at the idea of command. Perhaps space really is tolerable after all. Anyway, he’s looking forward to getting off this luxury tin can and out into real-life _sunshine_ again. It’s been entirely too long, and heat lamps in sick bay only do so much for space sickness. 

“The planet _is_ inhabited, so of course you need to avoid contact with the native species at all costs. Shouldn’t be terribly difficult, as they’re a primitive race and primarily reside in this region,” the senior officer indicates on a PADD with the planet’s image lit up along a coastal region. “You two will be here,” she adds, gesturing to an area that’s a significant distance away from the inhabitants. “Before you beam down—“ 

“Wait, we’re _transporting_?” Louis spits out before he can stop himself. He feels Harry’s eyes (green, definitely green) cut to him so quickly that it very nearly burns; after all, he _did_ just interrupt a senior officer. “Sorry,” he tacks on, coloring. “Permission to speak freely, sir?” 

She sighs and nods, tapping her fingernails against the PADD in evident irritation. “Proceed, Ensign.” 

“If our objective is to obtain samples, _alien_ samples at that, are we limited to what he can carry in his hands? What can be locked onto with a transporter beam?” he asks, and he doesn’t mean to, but he looks at Lieutenant Styles’s hands and immediately regrets it. They're very large and very lovely, and that’s not what Louis needs to notice in this moment. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to take a shuttlecraft down to the planet’s surface?” he adds breathlessly. 

He’s met with silence and two pairs of eyes burning into him. “Lieutenant Styles didn’t request the use of a shuttlecraft,” she offers, and Louis cuts his gaze back to Styles, eyes narrowed and sharp, because _really_? Does he actually want to _carry_ that much dirt? Or was he planning on transporting back and forth, over and over again, because he isn’t an engineer and doesn’t understand how the machine works and doesn't have a healthy respect bordering on _terror_ for the thing? Because Louis…Louis knows transporters. They’re finicky and dangerous and all sorts of unnatural, not to mention _faulty_. He doesn’t want to be split into a million bits in order to be shot through space if he doesn’t have to. 

“Erm,” Lieutenant Styles says suddenly, like he only just realized that they’re both waiting on him. “I didn’t…a shuttlecraft would be wonderful, actually, if there’s, well. If there’s one still available in the shuttle bay, sir.” His voice is slow and syrupy, and Louis’s sort of taken aback by the sweet timbre of it. He isn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this, exactly. There’s a hesitance to it, a clumsiness, but it’s still _smooth_. Louis doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t like that he _wants_ to. 

The senior officer sighs a long-suffering sigh, and Louis gets the impression that he and Harry are at least in similar standing with her. And it’s sort of nice, maybe, to not be at the _very_ bottom. Or perhaps to not be there alone. “There are several. Would you like me to secure one for the mission?” 

“Please,” Styles rumbles, nodding. 

“Noted,” she sighs again. 

The senior officer continues to brief them, and Louis might…he might not be paying the closest attention. It’s Styles’s mission, anyway, he’s simply the red shirt with the phaser, the engineer in case anything breaks (which it likely will since Starfleet regulation equipment is sort of known to do so). Instead of worrying about soil and minerals and whatever else Styles is going to be scooping up, he worries about Styles himself. Worries about his big hands (with the tiny cross tattoo on the ditch beside his thumb--how, even), his shiny hair, his absurd mouth that shouldn’t be real but somehow is. Louis steals fleeting glances at him through narrowed eyes, annoyed that he somehow got around the regulation crewcut and has a straight up _bun,_ not to mention a visible tattoo. He wonders what that hair looks like down, how curly it is, how dark it gets when it’s wet, how many _other_ , currently not visible, tattoos he has. Louis knows these are awful things to wonder about a stranger, but his mind is wandering, as it often does, in the presence of a tall, fit, pretty-boy. At least now that they’re standing side by side, Louis is realizing he’s not _actually_ that tall, which only makes him feel _slightly_ better. 

“Any questions?” the senior officer asks, eyes darting between Louis and Styles, flat and disappointed, as if they’ve already failed. 

“No, sir,” Louis replies curtly, Styles mumbling it after him, eyes cast to the floor. Worst lieutenant ever, Louis decides. 

“Great, you’re dismissed. We’ll have Mr. Payne transport your supplies to the designated shuttlecraft,” she tells them. 

Louis sighs, and so they go, through the automatic doors and down the corridor, taking a turbolift to the shuttle bay and standing close enough that their elbows bump once, Louis’s heart leaping up into his throat like the traitorous thing that it is.

It’s the quietest turbolift ride of Louis’s life. He can hear Lieutenant Styles _breathing_ , it’s so quiet, his big, careful inhalations, the shuffle of his hands together as he wrings them nervously. He’s palpably anxious, and it’s making _Louis_ anxious. He can’t take it anymore, wants to hear that molasses voice again, wants to know this guy’s first name if they’re gonna be stuck in a shuttlecraft together for the forty minutes it will take to land on the planet’s surface. 

“So,” he starts, clearing his throat, “my name’s Louis, just so you know. Unless you’d prefer to be _extra_ protocol this whole mission and only refer to each other by rank.” And even as it comes out, it sounds _testy_ , insubordinate, but he doesn’t mean it to come out that way, it’s just how his voice sounds. He’s the Jessica Rabbit of space travel, and he's probably going to get kicked out of Starfleet on his first goddamned away mission because tall, fit, pretty-boys are his weakness, officers with shit leadership skills are his pet peeve, and this Lieutenant Styles is _both_ of these things. 

Thankfully, the other man doesn’t yell at him or anything. In fact, his face softens a little, and he smiles, just a touch, at the corners of his pretty pink mouth. “M’Harry. Nice to meet you, Louis, and I…I much prefer first names to ranks, if m’honest. I know that’s, like…not customary, but,” he shrugs, blushing, and, _oh_ , Louis is in terrible, terrible trouble. _Harry_. Harry Styles. “This is my first time commanding a real away mission, actually,” Harry admits, coloring deeper. “Luckily, it isn’t a big mission or anything, but…yeah. I’d appreciate if you were patient with me.” 

Louis cocks his head, wishing it were appropriate to suggest that Harry just…put him in charge instead. He doesn’t know shit about soil or minerals or whatever they’re getting, but he feels like he can _command_. Make decisions on the fly, delegate. He’s gonna be perpetually irritated if Harry isn’t good at something that Louis _knows_ he could do better, so he wants to be able to promise patience, but all he can honestly manage is, “Well, I’ll try my best.” 

“Thank you,” Harry tells him, pursing his lips. The turbolift dings as it comes to a stop, and Louis resists the urge to stride out briskly as the doors swing open. Instead, he waits for Harry to lead, and he follows, teeth grinding as his eyes sweep up the broad expanse of Harry’s back. _S’just a quick, routine mission,_ he thinks, swallowing down the bubble of combined frustration and foreboding in his throat. _You follow some weak orders, do your job, fly back, and never think about him again. He’s not_ that _cute._

Louis’s good at lying to himself, so he does it all the way to the shuttle bay. 

It isn’t until they’re about to board that Harry gives his first command, if you can even call it that. Louis can tell it’s his first because he inhales sharply before he says it, a slow, rattling inhale like he’s about to plunge under a cascade of water or into the cold black of space. “Ensign,” he says, voice cracking before he coughs and it deepens. “Do you know how to fly a shuttlecraft?” 

Louis’s eyes get wide. “Yes. Yes, I do,” he assures him, wondering if Harry has piloted anything since the academy. He isn’t sure what science officers actually _do_ , after all, and the quick, relieved slump to Harry’s shoulders as he sighs suggests that whatever it is, it isn’t manning crafts. “Sir,” Louis adds, just to see if Harry blushes. 

He does. “Great. Would you please,” he tacks on, holding his hand out like a prince at a debutante ball or something. Louis wants to hate him because he seems…well, incompetent is too strong of a word. He seems _unprepared_. And Louis _would_ hate him, would be absolutely seething with bitterness if he weren’t so sweet-seeming, so pretty. The whole mess together is confusing, but Louis can’t hate Harry because Harry seems distinctly and remarkably un-hateable, so instead, his hate is indirect, unspecific. It floats around him, like the air in this ship. Fake, recycled, stale. 

“Certainly, Lieutenant,” Louis responds, not without snapping. That, too, seems fake somehow. 

He shoulders his way into the craft and plops down to pilot, hands sweeping loosely over the familiar command console. He’s worked on these before, rewired them, repaired damage. He doesn’t look at Harry as he sits down and straps himself in, eyes decidedly fixed on the console as he powers the craft to life, everything starting to hum around him, the comforting mechanized purr of things that he _knows_. 

“Alright, Lieutenant. You just sit tight while I deliver you to the dirt on Delta IV, yeah?” he says, making a face afterward because he isn’t sure if his jokes sound like threats or sexual innuendos or _both_.

“How long should it take?” Harry asks. 

“Ermm…’bout forty minutes to an hour if everything goes right. Taking her down into orbit should be easy enough, then we just need to locate the coordinates on the planet and land her,” Louis explains, noticing how Harry sort of lurches back in his seat uneasily as the craft starts moving. “S’alright…you don’t get space sick, do you?” Louis asks, pursing his lips, wishing again that he could channel his contempt for this situation and his job and Starfleet in general toward Harry, but _knowing_ that it’s useless. He already likes him, already wants to make him comfortable, know him better. “Want me to get a paper bag or—”

“No, m’fine,” Harry interrupts sharply, shooting a warning look, the first indication thus far that he doesn't appreciate Louis’s _tone_. “I won't be sick. I haven't been sick from it in awhile…it’s just. There’s a reason I wanted to transport.” 

Louis rolls his eyes. “The transporter is absolute rubbish,” he tells him, and Harry looks shocked, but it’s _true_. “Trust me, as an engineer? It’s literally always malfunctioning. There are, like, ten different ways you can die a horrible death in that thing this…this is much safer, really. And not just because m’an excellent pilot,” he jokes, and Harry doesn’t look any more comforted, so he drops the smile, sighing. “With a shuttlecraft, anything that goes wrong is due to a freak accident or human error. With the transporter, it’s basically dumb luck. The thing is positively an abomination,” Louis says, jerking his chin to gesture since his hands are otherwise occupied. Shit-talking the death trap known as the transporter is one of his greatest passions, so it’s hard to discuss without the ability to wildly gesticulate. 

“I theoretically _know_ that,” Harry grinds out, hands white-knuckled as he grips his seat uncomfortably while Louis steers them toward the wide, star-speckled black sprawl ahead of them. He shivers. For an engineer working on a starship, he sure hates space. Harry shifts next to him, breathing sharply. “It’s just…with the transporter, you're on the ship, and then you aren’t. I know it’s _technically_ more dangerous or fallible or whatever, but this…it’s a whole forty minutes to an hour of me having to feel every little hiccup of turbulence n’being stressed out. S’awful. Ensign,” he adds awkwardly at the end of his meandering little speech, as if to remind Louis of where he stands. 

Louis presses his lips together and sighs, continuing his slow, methodical take-off into space. As they leave the shuttle bay behind, he’s very aware of Harry _tensely_ sitting beside him, of his fists and rapid breath and clenched jaw. “Well,” he sighs again, plotting a course for the planet and flicking on the autopilot before letting go of the console to crack his knuckles, to watch Harry squirm. “I understand your concerns, Lieutenant. Even if they aren’t rooted in logic. It’s just…you’re as safe as your pilot in a shuttlecraft, and I’m as safe a pilot as they come, yeah? You’re welcome to unbuckle your seatbelt...we’re on course now.” Harry does so, albeit painstakingly slowly, with careful, clumsy fingers. Louis wants to ask him about the tattoo on his hand, if he’s a Christian, seeing as he’s so fond of illogic, but he doesn’t trust himself to deliver a single thing in a professional fashion, so he stays quiet. “Hey,” he says after a moment, raising his eyebrows and looking at Harry as sincerely as he can muster. “We’re safe. You’ll be elbow-deep in alien dirt in no time.” 

“Thank you,” Harry replies curtly, smoothing a palm over his forehead to tamp down the little flyaways that have escaped his bun. He has spots along his hairline like a teenager, and it makes Louis feel a sudden surge of fondness--that Harry Styles has imperfect skin, that Harry Styles is afraid to fly. That Harry Styles is so familiar in that he is _human_. Inexplicably soothed, Louis turns back to the expanse of space and pretends that he’s counting stars. 

It isn’t until they’ve made it through a full orbit to survey the terrain, just as he’s about to take the craft down for their landing, that Harry speaks again. “Lou...Ensign. My tricorder is detecting irregular energy fluctuations near the surface...are you picking up on that?” 

Louis is, of course, because Louis does his job. He hadn’t mentioned it because he didn't want to _alarm_ Harry, but he supposes that’s a moot point now. “I am. It’s probably nothing, but just to be safe, I’m gonna—”

In that second, something hits the shuttle. Nothing _physical_ , nothing Louis can _see_ , but the force of it sends them flying, spinning, and the panic is so sudden and fierce that it chokes him. “Fuck!” he manages, fumbling for his seatbelt even though they’re already strapped in, ready for descent. “Did you…what was...” 

Harry is breathless with adrenaline, panting as he babbles, “I don’t know, I don’t know…tricorder is still picking up readings, energy surges, I’m not—“

Another wave hits them, Louis smells smoke, and then they’re going down. “Shit! Mother _fucker_ ,” he yelps, fumbling with the console and trying to regain control, heart in his throat. 

“I lost…I lost contact with the ship,” Harry gasps, hands braced against his own thighs as they hurtle toward the planet’s surface, trees and oceans and glittering rock formations becoming distinct as they plummet. “We’re gonna…what if we land on the civilization, what if we break the prime directive…what if….” 

“ _Lieutenant_ ,” Louis reminds him, doing everything in his power to keep them from crash-landing in the fucking _sea_ , scanning for a flat area, a clearing, _anything_ , some stretch of smoothness ahead of them so that if they die, at least they die on flat ground. “You’re in command.” 

“I _know_ that I’m in command!” Harry yells, turning on Louis, green eyes flashing and hard and angry above the spots of color on his cheeks. “And _I_ wanted to transport.” 

Louis tastes something metallic in the back of his throat and feels an absurd flash of _guilt_ rise in his chest, guilt at having reassured Harry earlier that this was a safer way to travel, guilt for lying without meaning to lie.“I know, I’m sorry, m’just…,” he says, trailing off as his voice gets choked up in his throat. _I’m scared, too. This is my first away mission, too. I wanted to keep you safe, and here we are._ His eyes burn as he flicks them back to the viewscreen, back to the planet and all its hills and valleys, the green of them obstructed by the smoke that’s billowing out of their craft. “Just...just hold on, okay, I’m gonna bring us down as best I can,” he tells him, voice shaking, sweat salty and stinging on his upper lip as he sweeps his tongue over it. “Take hold of something on the ship so that you’re rooted when we land.” 

It’s getting hard to breathe; he can smell burning rubber and something gaseous, and his mind is already providing him with a host of worst-case scenario engineering failures in graphic detail. He struggles to inhale, and sure enough, Harry coughs out, “Life support is down. We have about fifteen minutes of oxygen left.” He shakes his head, hair coming down from the bun and falling in loose chunks around his face. “Fuck. I can’t fucking believe that this is happening.” 

“Well,” Louis sputters, “we’re gonna be down in five. Hold on, strap yourself in, do whatever you need to do,” he advises, letting go of his sweat-slicked death grip on the console long enough to tighten his own seatbelt pathetically. _Would have liked to have known you better, Harry Styles_ , he thinks of saying, but he isn’t sure if you’re supposed to accept that you’re gonna die or fight it until the very end, what the best method is to go about cosmically altering your fate. “I’m sorry,” he says again, even though random freak energy surges are _not_ something he has any control over. 

Harry doesn’t say anything. He just unsticks his hand from wherever it’s gripped, reaches out, and cuffs Louis on the shoulder. The touch burns, and Louis isn’t even sure that it happens because everything around him is so fast, so blurred, so surreal. There’s nothing but the deafening crash of metal and the maybe pressure of Harry’s maybe hand, Louis's eyes shut tight in defensive, animal terror as they hit the ground. 

—-

The landing isn’t as bad as it could have been. They survive, at least, and Harry’s very grateful for that because although it would be very like him to die or be responsible for someone else’s untimely death during his very first command, it’s obviously not his preference. 

He has a nasty burn on his shoulder from the seatbelt tightening and snapping, and somehow his shirt is torn because Starfleet uniforms are _meant_ to tear or something, but he's intact, and he isn’t _visibly_ bleeding; his head might be pounding, but it’s _on_. Like, attached to his body, which is a relief. He blinks through the smoke, ears ringing and eyes streaming as he scrambles across the floor to Louis, who’s in the middle of a spectacular coughing fit. “Are you…are you okay?” he sputters, staggering to his feet and frantically patting down Louis’s shoulders, trying to free him from the belt. They hit a tree or something on the way down, so one side of the craft is somewhat caved in, but Louis seems _fine,_ just stuck, pinned. 

“M’fine, quit it,” Louis says, voice high and hoarse as he shoves Harry’s hands off. “Stop.” 

Harry stops, shrinking away. He knows that he could just use his rank, he could command Louis to hold still so that he can cut him free and get them both out of this craft and away from its bad air and failing oxygen, and he _would_ , if it were any other officer, probably. But instead of being assigned any other officer for his first command, he got stuck with _Ensign Fucking Tomlinson_ , the officer he’s been admiring from afar for at least two months, or however long Louis’s been assigned to the ship. Harry sees him randomly in the hallways between shifts, in the mess hall, and once in Rec Room 2 when he and Lieutenant Commander Payne had been about to play a game of chess. He remembers walking in and seeing Louis--Louis, with his laugh that’s somehow both explosive and delicate, Louis, with his twinkly blue eyes and perfect bum--and had promptly walked out, mumbling something about forgetting his communicator. It’s ridiculous, he knows it, but Louis’s the sort of attractive that makes him quiet and awkward and self-conscious, makes him turn red and evacuate. Harry’s amazing at flirting with grandmothers and married straight men--people he’s not _actually_ interested in--but he forgets everything he knows about the subject and simply _flatlines_ around guys like Louis. 

Louis, who’s currently still struggling in vain with his seatbelt, dripping sweat from his hair onto his brow, and looking like he’s about to pass out. Harry fumbles with the console a minute before he manages to pop the hatch, the sudden rush of good air making him gasp, shudder. “Ensign,” he forces himself to say as sternly as he can manage. “Let me help you.” 

“Fine,” Louis sighs, arms falling to his sides in defeat. “Unbuckle me.” 

Harry sort of giggles, feeling absurdly amused at this entire situation, that he’s managed to total a shuttlecraft and nearly suffocate to death in it on his first command, that the other half of his away team is the guy he’s had an active and debilitating crush on since he first saw him. He’s feeling light-headed and dizzy and relieved to be alive, and all of that seems to override the fact that he could very well be kissing his career goodbye right now. He tries not to think about it, smiling reflexively and embarrassingly as he yanks Louis’s seatbelt out of the crumpled metal it’s stuck in and helps him wiggle out of it, teeth bared like he’s a feral animal. 

“What are you smiling at?” Louis asks, and if he’s trying to snap, he fails, voice reduced to tatters from inhaling smoke and coming out all soft and reedy instead. It’s a lovely voice, and Harry wonders if he sings, wonders what it might sound like up against the shell of his own ear in some different world, some different universe, where their lives aren’t in _mortal peril_. He shivers and throws Louis’s arm over his own neck, so that he can help him stumble out of the craft and into the sunlight. 

“M’just…m’glad we’re alive,” he answers. Harry’s legs aren't working very well either, so as soon as their boots hit the ground, he’s falling to his knees, coughing and sprawling out, so fucking relieved to be standing on terra firma that he wants to kiss it. He lies there blinking in the sun, head lolling to the side until his gaze lands on Louis, and he stops wanting to kiss the ground because, well. He’d much rather kiss Louis instead. 

Louis’s sweat-shiny and his eyes are shut as he sucks in grateful inhalations, lips parted and lashes fluttering against the lovely, scruffy cut of his cheek. _Oh,_ Harry thinks, as if he’s seeing him for the first time, as if he only just now noticed that Louis’s perfect, that he piloted a shuttlecraft in messy free-fall and landed it to keep them from dying. “You probably saved our lives,” Harry rasps, reaching out and resting his fingers on the inside of Louis’s elbow, where his red uniform is damp with sweat. “Thank you.” 

Louis’s eyes snap open as he flinches away from Harry, irises as impossibly blue as the sky above them, sun-streaked and brilliant. They stare at each other for a few seconds, aching and loaded, and then Louis starts to laugh. It’s more wheezing than actual laughter, but it’s real all the same, eyes crinkling up at the corners, tears welling there. Harry laughs, too, and for a moment they just lie in the dirt and shake with hysterics, with the sudden and astounding clarity that they’re _alive_. “Fuck,” Louis squeaks at some point, covering his face with his hands. “M’gonna need to repair the ship...s’gonna take _days_ …it’s too big to beam up, though, transporter won’t lock onto something that size. I’ll have to stay here and fix it. So, we need to get you beamed up...get you a new away team so that you can go about your mission,” he sighs. 

Harry’s disappointed. He doesn’t _want_ another away team, even if he _knows_ this won’t go anywhere, can’t go anywhere. He inhales shakily and sits up, pulling his hair elastic with trembling fingers so that he can shake out his curls. “Communications went out while we were falling. I guess first thing’s first: you’ll need to run a diagnostic and see what systems need repairs. Prioritize communications so that we can contact them and let them know what happened.” 

“Have you tried your pocket communicator?” Louis asks, quirking his brow, and _fuck_ , Harry is dizzy, must have hit his head in the descent. 

“No...should probably do that,” he admits, fishing into his slacks pocket to find his communicator, cheeks burning. He watches out of the corner of his eye as Louis rises on unsteady feet, shaking his head, pursing his lips. 

“Well. While you talk to the ship, I’m gonna inspect...see if I can get a damage report so that we can let engineering know what supplies I’ll need for repairs,” he groans lightly, dusting himself off. 

Harry tries hard not to watch him go. 

Three hours later, they’ve managed to _break the fucking transporter, too_. Harry’s pretty sure that he's cursed, that his command is cursed, that he should be demoted if not fired and never allowed to give an order ever again. Louis, somehow, is complacent. “I _told_ you that they’re rubbish,” he smiles smugly, kneeling at the half-crushed side of the shuttlecraft and doing something engineer-y to it. Harry is sitting on a rock that might actually be a stump of petrified wood; he’s never sure with alien landscapes. He has his head in his hands, and he might be close to tears. 

“I just…I can’t _believe_ it malfunctioned. Right in the middle of a transport.” 

“Believe it, Lieutenant,” Louis says, spinning a wrench idly in his fingers. “It’s what they do. Just be grateful no _human_ was in the beam when it happened...we only lost some sheets of siding.” 

_What are we going to do?_ he thinks but doesn’t say because he _knows_ he’s in command, that it’s not a “we” situation, it’s an “I” situation, and he needs to make the decisions, ultimately. He just isn’t sure what those decisions should be, now that he can’t beam up to the ship and have it deposit him at the _actual_ site of the mineral deposit. He feels useless, a good 400 kilometers from where they're _supposed_ to be and entirely _too_ close to the civilization they need to avoid. Harry’s stressed, and when he’s stressed, he sweats, so he’s just sitting there _sweating_ , thinking that the only thing worse than _dying_ on one’s first command is to get marooned on an alien planet with the man of one’s _dreams_ , doomed to stew in a mess of one’s own _sweat_ the whole time. 

“How long…how long do transporter malfunctions even last?” he asks Louis. 

“Hmm…depends. If it’s just a programming bug, it can be up and functional again in a few hours. If it’s a real issue, it’s out for weeks, months...hard to say definitively,” he explains as if it’s no big deal, hammering something out with deft fingers before holding it up to the sunlight and peering at it with narrowed eyes. 

Harry’s heart sinks low into his gut. “Continue repairs, Ensign,” he says, rubbing his open, decidedly sweaty palms on the front of his slacks. “I’m going to survey the surrounding area to see if I can get an idea of the terrain. Maybe there’s a mineral deposit somewhere around here, too, so I can complete my mission objective…or maybe there’s a fresh spring. So we can drink,” he adds, thinking, _or bathe_ , because he feels disgusting, and that’s a bad way to feel around someone like Louis, whose eyelashes are too long and whose eyes are too blue. 

Louis looks at him, head cocked, something skeptical playing on his face. Harry bristles because it’s _insulting_ to be looked at like that by a red shirt, to have someone under his rank question his command, even though he _knows_ that it isn’t his strength, _knows_ that Louis’s presence is making him stumble, fall. “What?” he asks, hands on his waist. 

“Want me to go with you?” Louis asks, pocketing his wrench. “I mean, that’s _my_ mission objective, yeah? To make sure nothing eats you? I mean, they gave me a phaser and everything,” he reminds Harry, patting it where it’s hooked into his belt. “You shouldn’t wander around alone,” he shrugs. 

Sensation spikes in Harry’s chest, a mess of indigence, want, fear. He chews the inside of his lip for a moment before making a decision. “No, I need you here, making repairs on the craft. I can't do that, but I can use a phaser. So, just give it to me, and I’ll be armed. Compromise?” he offers, holding out his hand, and Louis has the nerve to _chuckle_ at him, white teeth and soft hair all messy as he cards a hand through it. 

“Command isn’t about compromise,” Louis smirks, as if laughing at his commanding officer isn’t insubordinate enough. Harry’s mouth falls open, and he snatches the phaser out of Louis’s hand so forcefully that Louis’s eyes widen, his laughter dying in his throat. 

“Do you talk to _all_ of your commanding officers like that? How’s your standing with Starfleet? Your record?” Harry snaps, shoving the phaser into his own belt, nevermind he’s never actually even really _used_ a phaser out of a controlled, simulated environment. “Because I can’t imagine it’s very good if this is a habit,” he continues, and Louis looks so stunned that it fuels him further. “I don’t care if you think I’m bad at my job...this is my first time commanding an away mission, and it’s your first _period_. It’s off to a less than ideal start for both of us, so I suggest that you listen to me, and we go by the book for the rest of it. We don’t want to fuck up our reputations with the captain anymore than we already have, right?” he asks, brow furrowed. 

Louis looks up at him for a long time, something unreadable playing across his face, a mixture of humor, surprise...something else. It flickers, and then it’s gone, like a snuffed flame. “You got me, Lieutenant,” Louis says eventually, pursing his lips. “We play nice.” 

Harry sighs, turns on his heel, and stalks off, Louis's voice echoing in his head. _You got me_. He pushes through a thatch of ferns, vegetation scraping irritatingly at his burn. _I don’t, but I’d like to_ , he thinks, chest tight and confused, scalp prickly, the way it always feels after any sort of confrontation. 

As Harry explores, he thinks about Louis and about Starfleet and wonders for the millionth time since graduating from the academy why on _earth_ he thought it would be a good idea to actually pursue a career on a _ship_. He _knows_ he can’t command, that he doesn't _want_ to command, that he'd do much better planetside, in San Francisco, teaching botany to cadets. 

But then he remembers his mum back in the UK, how proud she was when he got assigned to the USS Pegasus. How she took his shoulders in hand, eyes wet, thumbs digging in as she told him, _we’re so proud of you, sweetie, so proud._ He spent most of his childhood lying on a mattress in the back garden with Gemma, tangled up in a knitted blanket and staring at the stars, imagining what it might be like to be _up_ there, to hurtle through the vast black of space and _discover_ things, plants so strange and alien that he could hardly even imagine them. Harry fancied himself an explorer of sorts, loved tripping through the woods flanking his bungalow or across the moors, upturning rocks and plucking weird bugs from the wet earth and examining them. He poured over books on alien foliage, the man-eating trees on Beta IIX, the sentient purple moss at the bottom of the oceans on Sigma V. He knew the only way to experience the things he dreamed of first hand was to actually _go there_ , to enroll in Starfleet and get assigned to a ship. 

The dream became less thrilling once he actually realized it. Starfleet is, for all its talk of first contact and adventure and promise, a military operation. It’s a peaceful military operation, but it’s the military all the same, and Harry simply isn’t cut out for precision and protocol. He likes to garden. He’s a _botanist_ ; he cares about _plants_. Space is huge and depressing and mostly rocks and black and gas and ice, and even when they _do_ explore class M planets, very rarely does Harry actually get put on away teams when higher-ranking science officers with more field experience can take his place. 

This mission is his chance to prove himself as a field officer capable of being left in command of small away teams, and so far, he's blown it. Crash-landed a shuttlecraft too far away from the actual mission site to do anything helpful, dry-mouthed and fidgety and perpetually awkward around the single most attractive ensign on the whole entire crew. Perhaps the single most attractive _person on board,_ period. It’s frustrating. 

Harry wipes sweat from his brow and collapses at the edge of a stone run made up of hundreds of thousands of fractured rocks. It’s faintly glittery and quite pretty, like granite with more of a blue-green hue, but he doesn’t want to twist his ankle walking over it, so he picks the biggest rock in the vicinity and sits, surveying the terrain. 

It’s a lovely planet they’re marooned on, he can’t deny that. The regions change rapidly; he’s encountered chaparral, deciduous woods, white-sand desert, and even faintly _tropical_ foliage in his trek of the area surrounding their crash site. He pulls out his tricorder to get some readings and is relieved to see that it’s picking up on a coastline just past the stone run. They can rinse off and gather some saltwater to purify. He’s about to push the antenna down and pocket his tricorder again when he notices a _life form_ reading on the edge of the screen, moving swiftly toward him. Humanoid. His heart leaps up into his throat fiercely, blood icing over as he scrambles to his feet, fumbling for the phaser that he took from Louis. 

Of course, he shouldn’t pull a phaser on any of the humanoids living on this planet--it’s beyond the realm of their civilization, and it would break the prime directive. But what if they’re hostile? Perceive him as a threat? He’s three seconds away from a panic attack, standing there with his hand poised to draw, mouth open and gasping, when Ensign Fucking Tomlinson stomps his way into the clearing, shirt so very red, like a spot of blood against the horizon. 

Harry lets out a relieved sigh and rights himself, embarrassed. “What…what are you doing here?” he yells. 

Louis picks his way across the stone run, tottering and clumsy. “Oi!” he shouts. “Lieutenant! Why aren't _you_ checking your communicator?! I tried to let you know that I was coming, but you weren’t answering.” Louis stumbles and catches himself with his hands, bent awkwardly in half as he shoots a frustrated glance in Harry's direction. “Also, why are there, like, a thousand rocks all over the ground for no reason? Is this a dried up river bed or something?” 

Harry smiles, endeared in spite of his better judgment as he trips his way over to Louis, not even bothering to try for grace when he knows it’s well beyond him, even on flat ground. “No…it’s called a stone run or a stone sea. S’caused by erosion over time, where softer stone just sort of crumbles and ends up spread out and fragmented, like this,” he explains, struggling to simplify the scientific description and break it down into language Louis can understand as a layperson. 

“Oh? Well, it’s shit to walk on...I twisted my ankle, like, six times already. You’re gonna have to carry me out,” Louis jokes, stumbling yet again, and Harry’s lungs contract painfully, leaving him breathless at the mere idea. He imagines shouldering Louis’s weight and piggybacking him, and he feels sort of sick, remembering how Louis wouldn’t even let him cut his body free of the craft while it was smoking, while _life support_ was down. He seems like the type of man to only _joke_ about accepting assistance and refuse it whenever it’s offered. Harry knows better, but that’s a wall he’s drawn to in people, a wall he forever wants to tear down. 

“You’re on your own there,” he says, crossing his arms. “Status report?” 

“The transporter is still down, and judging by the damage, it’ll be out for a few days, at best,” Louis winces. “Hopefully, it’ll be able to transport small items, supplies, before then. But it won’t be safe for _us_ anytime soon. We also have very, very spotty and limited communication with the Pegasus, which is just out of range...the pocket communicators are essentially useless unless the ship is in the exact right moment of orbit.” 

Harry groans, covering his face with his hands, heart sinking. “We don’t have provisions for that long,” he admits, “so it better be able to transport food asap. Or we’re gonna be trying our luck at fishing.” 

“I happen to be an amazing fisherman,” Louis grins, “ _and_ there happens to be an ocean not too far away, according to my tricorder readings. There are fruit trees, too, not far from the craft…you’ve got long arms, can’t you just…pick some?” Louis sounds so very unconcerned with the idea of starving to death that Harry’s _confused_ , feels like he’s missing something. Louis’s treating this marooning like a _vacation_ , probably because _he’s_ not the one in command, _he_ doesn’t have to worry about how this looks, how this reflects on his leadership skills. 

Harry sighs. He could get on Louis’s case for his attitude, call him out for his flippancy, but he doesn't have the energy. He’s dizzy and heat-sick, his throat still burns from all the smoke he inhaled, and the sun is already starting its slow descent in the sky. He wants to get clean, lug water back to the shuttlecraft to purify before dark, and actually set up camp while they still have light. “Let’s find the coastline,” he suggests, rubbing his palms together before he pulls his tricorder out to get the proper direction. “You can catch some fish.” 

Louis nods and follows, and in the yellow-orange glow of late afternoon, they head toward the scent of salt. 

\---

Louis can’t believe his luck. So, he crashed a shuttlecraft and is probably going to get booted off the ship and back to the academy as soon as this mission is over, but at least he’s getting an impromptu shore leave on the most gorgeous planet he’s ever seen with a man who’s _twice_ as gorgeous. At least he’s going out with a bang, and at least there’s Harry Styles.It’s not like anything is going to _happen_ with him, but he’s great to look at and generally very pleasant company, for which Louis is grateful. 

They hike through a sort of desert-jungle-forest, and there’s probably a technical name for it that Harry knows, but Louis’s too winded by the excursion to ask. He just trails behind Harry, watching the shift of his broad, toned shoulders under his torn blue shirt, wondering where else one could find ferns, palm trees, and _pine_ trees growing from white, billowy sand dunes. It’s fucking unsettling, and on top of that, they’re surrounded by huge, red-gold flowers that look like they’re made from some sort of costume material, metallic tulle or maybe taffeta, and they _move_ when they walk by, flexing in the air like Venus flytraps. They smell sickly sweet, and Louis wonders if that means they’re carnivorous. 

It’s taking forever to get anywhere because Harry is like a kid in a fucking candy shop. He _loves_ the creepy flowers, like, positively loves them, Louis can tell, because he keeps rushing up to them and touching them with terrified, tentative fingers, like there’s no risk at all whatsoever that they’re gonna spit acidic venom or sex pollen at him or anything. He examines them and sniffs them and takes his tricorder out and mumbles about them, and Louis would be irritated at being delayed so many times if Harry wasn’t also so fucking _endearing_. “You’re not…you’re not worried that those are poisonous or anything?” he asks at one point, standing behind Harry with his arms crossed while Harry carefully plucks a long, slender thorn off a winding vine the exact vibrant red of a poinsettia. It weeps a gummy substance, like aloe, and Harry fearlessly dabs a finger into it. 

“Well, the tricorder would pick it up,” he assures him. “If they were dangerous, I mean. I think I’m exercising a suitable amount of caution, thank you very much. I’m a professional, remember.” Louis watches Harry wipe the goop on the front of his uniform, and something in his chest clenches painfully. He wants to kiss the hollow of Harry’s throat, he wants to sweep his tongue over the jut of his Adam’s apple, he wants to suck salt from the honey-gold of his skin. He’s just...god. He’s fucking beautiful, and there’s such _care_ in everything he does, such prudence, and gentleness. Harry’s brow is furrowed, and he’s chewing his lip while he picks his fingertip with the thorn so thoughtfully, drawing blood to the surface in a tiny crimson bead. 

Louis wants to bite something, has to physically clench his jaw, the desire to take Harry’s hand and shove that finger in his mouth is so fucking overwhelming, so dizzying. He isn’t used to seeing other people’s blood, and he certainly isn’t used to wanting to taste it, have it inside him. He’s probably sick from all the gas and smoke he inhaled during the crash, and he _did_ hit the back of his head, so maybe he’s fucking concussed. Or maybe Harry is just…special. He seems like the sort of person who could change one’s preferences forever. “What did you did that for?” he asks sharply, pretending to be affronted at the blood instead of moved. 

“I wanted to test something…,” Harry replies faintly, trailing off. Then, in seconds, his eyes light up in the most brilliant green. It almost makes Louis angry, it’s such a lovely color. “Oh! See, look,” he gasps, holding up his finger, which is a little pink but otherwise no longer punctured. The wound, however tiny, has already closed up. “These sorts of plants have a sort of rapid healing agent in their cytoplasm. There’s something like it on Theta Alpha II...I remember reading about it. Their molecular makeup is almost the same, according to the tricorder readings, so I thought…I wonder if the people who live here use it like that, if they’ve discovered it yet,” he muses, eyes still caustically bright as he clicks his gaze up to Louis. 

It almost _hurts_ , like getting struck. Louis has to take a step back--Harry looks too good, too hectic, with his messy hair and pink cheeks. Louis has terrible impulse control, and right now, his impulse is to kiss Harry Styles. It’s a very bad impulse to have about one's commanding officer, especially in the midst of a disastrous away mission, so Louis’s only defense is retreat. “I...that’s good, I guess, right? We can gather some, take it back when we set up camp. The med kit they gave us is pretty rudimentary, so might be helpful to have a magical healing vine, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, fumbling with his torn shirt, pulling it down to expose his shoulder. Louis bites the inside of his cheek, taken aback by the sudden revelation of skin, pale and sweat-dewy and _inked_ , a small cluster of tattoos visible on Harry's collarbone. “I got a burn from the seatbelt, when we landed,” he explains, tugging the neck aside to reveal more, red and torn and lymphy. 

Louis’s dizzy, hands moving beyond his control as he reaches out, takes Harry by his shoulders, and steers him into better light, their boots shuffling through the sand. Harry goes quietly, body slack and unresisting as Louis rips his shirt a little more so that he can examine the wound without flat out taking the shirt _off_. He isn’t sure which is less professional, but Harry doesn’t say anything, so he continues as if blood isn’t pounding deafeningly in his ears. “Why didn’t you tell me you were injured?” he asks, thumbing along the edge of the burn, gritting his teeth in sympathy. “There was a med kit on the ship, I could have—”

“Ensign,” Harry interrupts, voice low with warning, with…something else. Louis lets go, suddenly worried that he's crossed a line, broken something fragile. “It’s not…it wasn't a big deal. I wasn't seriously injured, and we needed to get off the craft. I sort of forgot about it until now,” Harry explains, adjusting his shirt to cover the wound back up, cheeks brilliantly pink. Louis wants to press his fingers into them, wants to feel the heat of that blush. 

“Well. We can wash it off in saltwater and use those magic plants to fix you up,” he says, clearing his throat, feeling _caught_ , somehow. He watches as Harry nods and then carefully uses his thumb and forefinger to twist off a length of the vine, prudently avoiding thorns. 

_Ensign,_ he keeps hearing in the back of his mind, the way it came out of Harry’s mouth in that low scrape of a voice, something barbed in it, something wavering. He shakes his head, face burning. He just wants to make it to the sea, wants to clear his head, wants something cool and crisp and familiar, some salt for his wounds. Something to wash this away, as he doesn’t feel prepared to deal with feelings beyond _attraction_. 

They kick their way through the sand, and Louis tries to stop counting the times that Harry stops to smell the flowers.

Louis begins to notice the sand under their boots is no longer entirely white. Instead, it’s threaded through with veins of blackness, creating a strange, eerie, salt-and-pepper effect. “Black sand beach,” Harry mumbles, crouching down and sifting his long, broad-jointed fingers through a handful of it. Louis watches, oddly mesmerized. “These are usually created from volcanic sediments or basalt…so there are probably some volcanos nearby,” he muses, standing. 

“Is that…bad?” Louis asks, following as Harry pushes through the foliage. The tear in his shirt widens as it snags on a twig, and Louis watches, eyes wide and stinging. He thinks volcanoes are probably bad, or at least _active_ volcanos are. Perhaps this isn't the idyllic shore leave planet he thought it was. 

“No, not at all, it just means that the sediments I need to sample might be closer than I thought,” he explains. “Mission objective, remember.” 

“I think that, since we're marooned, and the shuttle _and_ the transporter are broken, and we can’t even communicate with the Pegasus, the mission objective can be pushed to the back burner for a bit, yeah?” Louis suggests. They’re close to the sea; Louis can tell because he can hear the distant crash of the tide against the shore, can smell the bite of salt. 

“You don’t get to decide what takes the back burner, _Ensign_ ,” Harry shoots back, but there’s a note of humor in his voice, and when he looks over his shoulder at Louis, his expression is almost _cheeky_. Louis smiles back, cautiously. 

“Noted, Lieutenant,” he responds. 

And then, quite suddenly, there’s the ocean, stretching out before them fierce and blue and choppy, crashing in white froth against the black shore, strange and glorious. They walk along it together in silence, wind tousling Louis’s hair and sand getting into his boots, and if their elbows brush occasionally, neither of them speak of it. 

Louis’s calves are positively _aching_ by the time they make it to a swimmable cove, not to mention he has rivulets of sweat dripping down his chest under his scratchy uniform shirt. He doesn't really think about it as he shucks his shirt, pulling it over his head and wadding it up before tucking it under a piece of jagged, volcanic rock to keep it from blowing away. It isn’t until he unbuckles his belt that it occurs to him that he's just…stripping off in front of his commanding officer. Someone he’s near-paralyzingly attracted to. It’s probably a bad idea. 

He looks to Harry for a cue, only to find that Harry’s already half-naked, wading into the surf up to his thighs, wearing nothing but a pair of clingy regulation boxers that ride high on his pale, plump thighs. 

Louis looks away abruptly, eyes and cheeks burning, mouth dry. He didn’t see much save for skin streaked in ocean, tattoos and more tattoos, and broad, golden shoulders. Still, his stomach is low and hot, his hands shaky as he rubs them together, examining the gooseflesh on his forearms. “Be careful,” Harry calls from the water, gesturing to nowhere in particular, as if Louis’s supposed to know which of the many potential dangers and pitfalls he’s being warned about. Louis’s wide-eyed silence must give him away because Harry points, adding, “Volcanic rocks are sharp...don’t…don’t cut yourself…,” he trails off at the end, furrowing his brows before turning away abruptly, back to the sea. Then he takes his hair down, and the wind carries it, buffeting his face, and this planet is too eerily beautiful, Harry Styles is too eerily beautiful. Louis feels dry-mouthed and confused and _angry_ ; this isn’t how his first away mission should be going, and he wants to blame Harry for their mishaps, for the _disaster_ …but he can’t. All he can do is unbuckle his pants and self-consciously shimmy out of them, wondering how in the hell he got here.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he grits out, too late. “I’ll try not to injure myself and make this mission any more of a mess than it already is,” he grumbles further, kicking off his boots and socks. 

“Speaking of injuries, will you help me dress my wound once I clean it?” Harry shouts back to Louis, over the sound of the surf as he thumbs under the nasty looking welt on his shoulder. Louis imagines the sluice of salt over it and cringes in a strange sort of empathy.

“Of course,” he answers, wading into the sea but keeping himself from tripping over to Harry to check it out up close, to aid in the cleaning process, too. It’s stupid; he isn’t a doctor, he hasn’t even had a shift in sick bay yet, and he knows virtually _nothing_ about this sort of thing, but he’s a caretaker, he likes to be in charge. Keep track of who's hurting and where and what there is to be done about it. In engineering, he’s always the one who rushes over to the med kit to grab a hypospray when someone burns himself messing about in the circuitry. And then there’s Harry--Harry, who he wants to touch _anyway_ , whether or not his skin is broken. Louis shakes his head, wishing the salt and wind and sun could clear it, that he wasn’t feeling stranger and stranger and less concerned with protocol the longer they spend away from the ship. 

“Thank you,” Harry yells over his shoulder before diving into an oncoming wave. 

Louis looks away, teeth grinding, eyes stinging. 

The water is surprisingly warm on his bare legs, tropical and frothy and clear. He wades out far enough to dunk under, and then he busies himself with rinsing the sweat and sand from his hair, from his underarms. He tries not to be hyperaware of Harry doing the same somewhere beside him, but it’s useless. His body is attuned to Harry’s now, simultaneously drawn to and repelled by it, like there’s a magnetic force keeping them dancing around each other, polarities, bits of cosmic dust in orbit, and before he even realizes what he’s doing, he’s swimming over into Harry’s space, eyes trained on his wound. “Is it hurting?” he asks. Harry looks startled for a moment, then taken aback. His face is so fucking expressive, like a cartoon character, and Louis sort of laughs at him, choking back a giggle as he points to his shoulder. “This thing you were only _just_ asking me about.” 

“Oh,” Harry yelps, looking down at the wound critically, making another absurd face in the process. Louis grins at him, shaking wet hair from his eyes as he treads ocean. “Yeah, that…no? Not really?” he shrugs, picking at the edge of the burn and wincing. “Well, yes, ‘specially in the salt, but pain doesn’t really bother me much.” He gestures to an enormous tattoo, a butterfly, on his stomach, one of many that Louis has been trying so hard not to look at. “This was worse. See, m’terrible at command, and I hate Starfleet, but before I even got assigned to a ship, I sort of fancied myself a sailor…,” he stalls out, eyes widening as he realizes what he’s just _said_ , and Louis gasps, so delighted to hear these words coming out of his _commanding officer’s_ mouth. “I didn’t…I shouldn’t…” 

“No, by all means, talk all the shit you want,” Louis chuckles, holding up his dripping hands. “I won’t stop you. I mean…me, too, if we’re sharing secrets here.” 

“You…hate it, too? Or fancy yourself a sailor?” Harry jokes awkwardly, cheeks pink, arms crossed over his chest defensively. Louis wants to push them down, pull Harry into him, kiss the soft, quirked up corner of his mouth. He wants to break the rules. 

“Hate the fleet, well...mostly hate _space_ , if I’m quite honest,” Louis clarifies, and it feels spectacularly dangerous as he says it to a lieutenant, to Harry Styles. It’s just them and the ocean, though, their communicators back on the craft, the Pegasus hovering miles and miles above them. “Are you gonna punish me?” he smirks, chewing his lip. “For insubordination?” 

And Harry holds his gaze with an indescribable sort of hardness, eyes flashing, deep green and sweet, like apple candy, the kind you suck. Louis’s stomach drops as Harry replies, “Well, you’d have to punish me back since I told you I hated it first,” his voice low, and _Jesus Christ_ , Louis wonders if this is it, if he should kiss him, if they’re officially flirting now. And what Harry said didn't even make _sense_ , Louis is _not_ in command and should be punishing exactly _no one_ , but he said it all the same, standing there while the sea laps around his waist, where Louis wants so badly to take hold, to _bite_. He shakes his head, but before he can say anything, Harry looks away abruptly, fighting to school his reaction. “I shouldn’t say _I hate it_...that’s not…s’not totally the truth. I’m grateful, ultimately. S’more like…it wasn’t what I imagined. I wanted to explore, you know, wanted to discover alien species of plants. M’not a military man, though, and at the end of the day…Starfleet is a military operation. No matter what they say.” 

Louis thoughtfully scrubs his arms with his palms, unusually quiet as he takes in what Harry’s saying, _how_ he’s saying it. He’s usually quick to snowball onto Starfleet criticism, but he doesn’t want to put words into Harry’s mouth, not when he’s talking like _this_ , so carefully, so slowly. “You could argue that this… _all_ of this, all of Starfleet, is imperial. I mean, exploration is, by nature, imperial, in some ways, yeah? ‘To seek out new life and new civilizations’...new plants,” Harry snorts, and it emboldens Louis to add, “S’more like the Federation’s entire mission statement is sort of imperial. After all, it’s not just scientists and anthropologists like you. There’s security, like me.” 

Harry cocks his head. “Didn’t figure you for a philosopher.” 

Louis opens his mouth in mock offense, splashing Harry, thrilled by his subsequent squawk as he fails to dodge the spray. “Why?! Because I’m a security officer?” Louis jokes. 

“Heeeeyyy, no. Because…I dunno. Until you said you hated Starfleet, I thought you were really…I don’t know, that you care about the ideals of it. I mean, you were testy, but I thought it was because you could see right through me. You’re adept, you judge my _command_ style—”

“Oh, _god_ , not because I care about Starfleet ideals! I _hate_ pointless rules and regulations and protocol. I only judged you because, well. I’d be good with a command, and I’m a very, ‘If you want it done right, then do it yourself,’ type of guy. No offense, Lieutenant,” Louis punctuates the last word with another splash, aware that his grin is too bright, too open. And this most definitely is flirting, swimming in his boxers with his commanding officer, telling him, _I hate rules, I’m not by the book, you’re weak at command._ It’s ten different sorts of out of line, and his stomach is tight, coiled, hot with the implications. 

Harry doesn’t look offended. His eyes are half-lidded, crinkled up at the corners, and he’s smiling, smiling, smiling while droplets of water run down the cords of his neck. “I’m sure,” he says, eyes cutting back to the water, the clear blue swirl of it over the black of the sand, “that you’d be very good at giving orders.” 

Louis isn’t cold, but he shivers. _I could show you,_ he thinks, shaking his hair, getting it all over Harry _. I could show you anything you wanted_. “Well, we’ll see. Doubt I’ll be getting any promotions after this mission,” is what he says instead. 

They both get a bit quiet after that, even though Louis doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to stop joking with Harry Styles, breaking the rules with Harry Styles. “You want me to dress the wound?” he asks after a stretched-out moment with nothing but the strange surf crashing to ease the silence. 

Harry looks at him, startled yet again, and answers, “Please. If you don’t mind.” 

It isn’t a command, not even close, but there’s a certainty to it that makes Louis’s stomach plummet, coiling hot and deep inside. 

“I don’t mind,” he replies, reaching out and putting a hand tentatively on Harry’s shoulder. It’s ocean-slick and warm, and he half-anticipates Harry pushing him off, but it doesn’t happen. They don’t look at each other, but Harry trembles a bit as Louis thumbs underneath the wound, smoothing over the skin just below the lymph-shiny white burn, where he’s hot, pink, faintly swollen. “Looks a little infected,” he murmurs, forehead tilted close to Harry, close enough that he can smell anticipation on his sharp, nervous exhale. 

_This is where you order me to stop,_ he thinks, thumb digging in a bit to stabilize himself as a wave crashes into their knees, sending them off balance. _Or else, this is where I kiss you._

The sea licks about them, and neither of these things happen. Louis’s face gets too hot to bear, Harry holds his breath, and at some point, one of them pulls away. “I’ll go dry off,” Harry sighs gently. “And then you can take care of me.” 

And it isn’t an order, not even close, but there’s a certainty to it that makes Louis’s stomach plummet. 

——

 

Harry has to get out of the water, he has to get _away_ from Ensign Fucking Tomlinson and his barbed, needling smile lest he do something very, very stupid and unprofessional. It’s _hard_ to pull away, though. Louis is just so _bright_ , bright like burning magnesium, bright like a star going supernova (which means it’s _dying_ , and as good as it might feel to burn up in his heat, Harry does not… _cannot_ get caught in this explosion). 

He swims back to shore, stomach in knots as he staggers onto the beach, black sand clinging to his leg hair and looking for all the world like ash. He sifts his fingers through it, waiting for the sun to dry him, gaze fixed unwaveringly on Louis’s uniform, jammed haphazardly under some rocks. It’s strange to feel things like _sunlight_ after spending so much time on their tin can of a ship, where there’s nothing but heat lamps and vitamin D supplements and the golden, aching memory of real sunlight. He soaks up the warm glow and misses home. 

Eventually, Louis comes back from the sea. He’s dripping and backlit, skin shining, and it’s very distracting because he’s _standing_ right in front of Harry, who’s sitting, meaning that Harry’s face is inconveniently at dick level. He looks down at the sand decidedly until Louis collapses beside him, all salt and wet and sunshine, busying his still-wet hands with Harry’s uniform and tricorder, just _helping himself_ , and Harry shudders until he stops thinking about it. 

“Ta-dah,” Lois announces softly, brandishing the length of vine that Harry had pried off the plant earlier, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. Harry notices Louis's hands, small and strong and veined and lovely, the sort of hands that work but manage to maintain a softness, a delicacy to them. The sort of hands that could hold him down, pin his arms above his head, tighten around his throat, smooth his hair off his brow...so much potential for punishment or tenderness. “You ready?” Louis asks, quirking up an eyebrow. 

Harry is not ready. Or, rather, he’s too ready. He wants those hands on him, touching him where he’s broken open, pushing inside. “Fuck,” he spits out, appalled at himself, and Louis’s eyes get _so_ wide, so blue. 

“Well. I guess we’re at that stage now, yeah? The _profanity_ stage?” he asks, fiddling with the vine, smirking. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Lieutenant Styles.” 

Harry grimaces as he feels around the burn on his shoulder where he’s tender, swollen. “Well,” he mumbles, turning to Louis and taking a deep breath, tilting his head, and extending his neck to expose the wound completely. “I have a lot of fucking things in me.” 

Louis cracks up. It’s light, tinkling, delightful laughter, like a wind chime, and Harry wants to hear it again, wants it up against his ear, under the sun, the _real_ sun, the sun from home. “So, are we friends now that we crashed a ship and went swimming and are officially cursing at each other?” Louis asks. 

Harry smiles, in spite of himself. “We can be friends, Ensign,” he sighs. “Now heal me.” 

Louis is very, very careful. He furrows his brow and purses his lips, and his tongue, pink and pretty, pokes out of the corner of his mouth as he rips a bit of the vine off, dabbing his fingers into the bead of clear, jellied liquid. “It’s okay if I touch you right on the burn?” he asks, eyes narrowed, hand poised a few prudent inches from Harry’s skin. 

_It’s okay if you touch me any way you want, any way at all,_ he thinks, cheeks hot as he nods, gesturing for Louis to continue. The cytoplasm stings at first, and Louis’s fingers are cold and ocean-puckered, but all of that only lasts for a moment before quite suddenly, the wound is overcome by a strange and tingling heat. Then, the pain of it subsides, and Louis’s pretty mouth drops open as he watches intently. “Is it getting better?” 

“Yeah, like…right before my eyes,” Louis marvels, thumbing over Harry’s collarbone with gentle, experimental pressure. Harry holds his breath, and the sun beats down on them, more than a memory and more than a witness. _Real_ , Harry thinks, feeling like he must be going mad. Louis’s fingers are warm now, gentle as he rubs over Harry’s new skin, pink and shiny and miraculously unblemished. 

“Huh,” is all that Harry can manage to say. It’s hard to think when Louis’s touching him, when everything is sun-hot and close and confusing. The moment expands, and Harry wonders. If they're friends now, what else they can be. How far the ocean stretches out into the horizon. 

Harry inhales, quick and ragged, and Louis’s hands fall away abruptly, as if he’s been burnt. Louis shakes his head, murmuring a low, “That’s incredible,” before clearing his throat, shaking his head, and leaning back. “No wonder you’re so passionate about botany,” he says, voice its usual pitch but soft around the edges, blurred. If he’s trying to joke, it comes out all wrong, and Harry takes a strange pleasure in that. 

“Plants…can be pretty incredible, yes,” Harry agrees awkwardly, shaking his head before rising on unsteady legs, brushing sand off as he goes. 

There’s a quiet that settles over them, but it's not uncomfortable, not tense. _Friends_ , Harry tries on within the privacy of his own mind, carefully and tentatively, as he doesn’t make a habit of befriending the men he finds attractive, especially if they’re his colleagues, especially if he _outranks_ them. 

He figures black sands and real suns make the difference, though, since he’s already doing things that he doesn’t usually do on the Pegasus, forming new habits, new rules. Or, no rules; this isn’t a regular mission anymore, and they aren’t on the ship. Things are fraying, coming apart, and he and Louis, whether or not they planned on it, have to forge a new sort of coexistence. Something more than colleagues. 

Louis follows suit and stands, eyes (terribly blue, terrifically blue) fixed to Harry’s now-healed wound, pink and tender. Harry’s fingers rise to self-consciously rub over where Louis is looking, and Louis audibly swallows. There’s something crackling in the air, and Harry feels like he could almost reach out and grab it, if it were more solid, if the dirty clench in his gut at the way Louis’s eyes keep cutting back to him wasn’t paralyzing. 

Harry wonders, not for the first time, if it’s just him.


	2. Chapter 2

They spend the rest of the day using their tricorders to scan and forage for edible plants, managing to find a few fruit-like gourd things that aren't half-bad. The outsides are hard and bitter, but there’s soft white flesh inside once you crack it open, pithy and tangy-sweet, like an Asian pear or the citrus from Alpha Psi. Louis is tentative about eating it, wrinkling his nose and peeling bits of it off and squeezing it between his fingers, not really putting it in his mouth at all. 

Harry has already had two by the time he finally nudges Louis in the calf with the toe of his boot and asks, “Are you afraid it’s poison or just absurdly picky?” 

“Both,” Louis answers, licking his fingers very, very carefully before making a face. “I like sausage rolls and fast food and when me mum cooks an honest meal.” 

“You don't like _fruit_? It’s literally just fruit,” Harry smiles, sucking his sticky fingers off and grabbing another one, whacking it open on a sharp rock since it’s the only way they’ve found to rupture the peel. 

“I like fruit _fine_ , I like…oranges and strawberries and l dunno…apples.” 

“How boring of you, Ensign,” Harry grins through a sloppy, juicy mouthful. Louis looks at him like he’s disgusted, but his eyes are twinkling, and Harry’s learning that’s a good thing, a thing that he can make happen. “Apples? Lemme guess…the red sort. Maybe green if you're feeling adventurous. A true English palate on this one.” 

“Apples are great! And I like all sorts, the yellow ones and the…sorta pink ones, all of ‘em, thank you very much. I don’t think it’s _boring_ , I’m just not stuffing myself full of _alien_ fruit that smells like weird cheese. I think it’s…reasonably self-preservative,” Louis adds, staring balefully down at his uneaten fruit. 

Harry makes a face, newly offended. “It doesn’t smell like cheese! And even if it _did_ , papaya smells like cheese, and it’s delicious,” he offers. He _is_ a tropical fruit enthusiast, and he _is_ feeling sort of personally hurt by Louis’s dismissal of their brilliant find, but he’s also _teasing_ , leaning into Louis’s space and jostling their elbows together and flirting. He feels light and rejuvenated now that he’s eaten, incredibly suspicious that Louis likes him, too, or at least likes how he looks, if the way his eyes keep catching on Harry’s mouth as they talk is any indication. It’s making him feel light-headed, giddy, _mad_. He should stop this, but he doesn’t want to. 

“Well, I’ve never had papaya, and the fact that you voluntarily compared it to cheese means I probably never will. Fruit should not smell like dairy products...it’s unnatural. I don’t _trust_ this alien cheese-fruit, and I’m half-expecting you to start puking your guts out any second, actually,” Louis says, head cocked and sassy, eyes glittering. He’s so _pretty,_ and Harry’s getting better and better at actually looking at him for sustained periods of time, holding eye contact and smiling at him, studying his sharp cheekbones, the auburn scrub of his stubble as it grows in. It’s a good face, an unusual face, not quite symmetrically perfect in a way that makes Harry want to cup it between his palms, thumb over the hollows of his cheeks, lick into his mouth. 

Which would taste pithy and tangy-sweet if Louis would eat the goddamned fruit, which he _won’t_. 

“It’s _not_ poison, it’s fresh and edible, and you _need_ to eat and hydrate if you’re gonna get anywhere on repairing the systems on the shuttle,” Harry reminds him, trying to sound as firmly, unquestionably in command as possible. “I order you to eat that fruit, Ensign,” he adds, before grinning cheekily. 

Louis sighs, then pouts, then reluctantly, painstakingly takes a bite. Harry watches him chew and swallow, fixated on the bob of his throat, his lips thin and pink as he licks the juice away. “Not bad. Sorta like apple pie without the cinnamon or the crust or the apples, but with that weird fiber supplement they have in sick bay instead.” 

Harry cracks up, carding a hand through his salt-sticky curls, and soon after Louis’s laughing, too, and then there they are, doubled over in front of their ruined craft as the alien sun sets somewhere in the distance, casting their camp in an eerily lovely lavender light. Harry’s stomach is aching by the time he gets his laughter under control, gales of it dissolving into wheezes. “Ow,” he hiccups, clutching his gut. “You’re right, I _might_ throw up.” 

“S’what you get for bingeing on those awful things!” Louis giggles, wiping his mouth. “The aftertaste isn’t too bad, though. M’gonna eat an entire one, just watch.” 

Harry does watch. Louis’s a sloppy, expressive eater, and he makes so many ridiculous faces, eyebrows arched and nose wrinkled up and eyes squinty and indignant as he struggles his way through the meal. “This is truly dreadful,” he mumbles through a mouthful. “And you’re just watching me suffer.” 

“I’m only exercising my responsibilities as the commanding officer of this mission,” Harry says lightly. “Making sure my entire crew is fit for duty.” 

“Isn’t much of a crew,” Louis observes, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, wrist soft as he does it. “Just you and me. Alone on this whole big planet.” 

_Just you and me. Alone._ It rings in Harry’s ears, and quite suddenly, what was all laughter and lightness becomes heavy, tight, molasses-slow. Their gazes lock, and Harry licks his lips nervously, thinking that there’s no one here to stop them from doing anything, there's only black sands, palm fronds rattling together, great twisting spires of rock, and a lavender sky bearing down upon them, softened ever so slightly by the memory of the sun as it sets. 

Louis tears his eyes away after several beats, and there’s a visible flush to his cheekbones, a heat that Harry can imagine under his lips. And Harry isn't stupid, even if he's bad at love, bad at acting on anything he feels. He knows that whatever this is that’s happening right now, it isn’t just him. It can’t be. 

He nods to himself, sucking stickiness from his fingers, gaze combing over the strange horizon as he lets this realization and all that it holds sink into him. Louis gets up and sighs, grabbing another fruit from their haphazard pile. “Think one more will make my stomach stop growling? I just want to work on the ship without my body yelling at me.” 

Harry nods crisply, not minding that Louis is choosing not to talk about this, that he’s letting the blush settle on his cheeks without mentioning it, without looking at Harry’s mouth still worrying around his knuckle. They have all the time in the world, it seems, marooned here with no borders or boundaries, nothing but a broken transporter, and Harry can wait. 

“M’gonna start a fire. S’getting chilly, and the sun’s setting,” he says after letting his fingers slide from his mouth with a pop. “You see what you can do with the craft.” 

Louis looks up at Harry skeptically as he stands, one brow cocked. “Oh, are you really gonna start a fire? Lieutenant Styles, camp-builder extraordinaire?” 

Harry makes a face, putting his hands on his hips. “You think I can’t? I’ll have you know that my sister and I were _frequent_ back garden bonfire enthusiasts when we were kids,” he assures, only exaggerating minimally. He can build a proper fire; he's done it before. With flint and a lighter, maybe, but still. The basic principles are probably the same. 

“Sounds dangerous,” Louis tells him, pursing his lips. “I’m more of a space heater kind of guy myself…so if you aren’t the wilderness expert you claim to be, we might be freezing tonight. There’s very little chance of me getting anything to actually burn properly.” 

“There’s one of those thermal blankets in the med kit,” Harry shrugs, even as his insides twist into a knot at what they aren’t saying, at the space they’ll inevitably share. “And body heat,” he adds, looking at his boots as he starts to pace the perimeter of their camp, looking for dry underbrush to gather for the fire as an excuse to keep from having to see Louis’s reaction. 

It doesn't matter because he _hears_ it. A sharp breath, catching and barbed as it goes in, more of a soft huff as Louis lets it out, messy enough that it could be mistaken for a sigh if Harry didn't know better. He knows better, though. 

“Good luck with that fire,” Louis says after a moment, voice sounding far away through the sound of blood pounding in Harry's ears. “M’gonna be in the craft…tinkering away with what _little_ equipment we still have. Doing m’best, which I can already tell you likely isn’t going to cut it…s’like trying to repair a ship with stone knives and bearskins. We have a less-than-stellar prognosis.” 

Harry shrugs again, rounding on Louis, forcing himself to _look_ so that their eyes can meet with the electric and gut-churning intensity that they’ve been dancing around all evening, all _day_. And there it is, as stunning and aching as ever, Louis’s eyes the bluest blue. “Do the best you can,” he tells him, rubbing the perspiration from his palms onto his uniform trousers. “Dismissed.” 

Starting a fire takes longer than anticipated, and Harry is realizing with a deepening clarity what Louis meant by stone knives and bearskins. He’s dirty and ruddy-cheeked and sweat-sticky by the time he _finally_ coaxes a flame and some smoke from his mess of friction and dry vegetation and volcanic rocks, and he’s honestly so stunned after so many failed attempts that he almost lets it go out. Thankfully, it perseveres long enough for him to pile more grass and kindling on top of it, and after a few minutes of held breath and plaintive praying to a deity that Harry has never believed in, he has an honest-to-god fire. 

It crackles and roars and is both large enough and contained enough that he feels like he can leave it, rising on unsteady, aching legs to stagger over to the craft, where Louis has been for the last forty-five minutes. “Louis,” he calls, standing at the crumpled titanium siding of the shuttle and rapping his knuckles against it, wiping sweat from his brow with the other hand. “It’s Lieutenant Styles, camp-builder extraordinaire.” 

Louis emerges moments later, looking frustrated and equally disheveled, uniform shirt newly ripped at the underarm hem, sleeves cuffed and also torn at the elbow. He throws a wrench on the ground and grumbles, “Hallelujah, I was just about to call it quits and try my luck with the fire, but it looks like I won’t have to. Which is good because it’s not much luck at all.” 

“Get anywhere?” Harry asks, even though he can tell by Louis’s stony expression that he did not. 

“Stone knives. Bearskins,” Louis sighs, putting his hands over his mouth and sighing in irritation. “I mean, some of the systems are running, like, we got life support back. Which is useless on a class M planet when you can’t fly…but hey, if there’s a mysterious gaseous storm in the next few hours, we’ll have breathable air.” 

Harry’s actually impressed. “Hey! Life support might not come in handy any time in the near future, but at least you got _something_ to work…also, doesn't that mean you’re into the computer system?” 

“Yes, but communications are still down, so a lot of good it does us,” Louis sighs again. “I wish I had a drink. Some Romulan ale would be perfect right about now.” 

“We can ferment some cheese-fruit,” Harry offers, eyes still stuck on the tears in Louis’s uniform, the bits of skin that are newly showing. Starfleet uniforms aren’t built to last, and, in fact, Harry has joked more than once that they’re designed with rip-apart seams for impromptu stripteases, but he’s never been so simultaneously grateful and resentful of this particular design flaw. He isn’t sure he knows yet how to look at Louis without being obvious, now that he can look at him at all. Now that he's started, he can’t stop. 

“You’re funny,” Louis smiles gently, eyes the blue of a sun-warmed ocean in the orange flicker of Harry’s firelight. “Wouldn’t have guessed it. Thought you were a stick in the mud.” 

“Why?” Harry asks as they collapse beside the fire, close but not together, enough space between their bodies that Harry can’t touch Louis accidentally; he’d have to make a conscious decision. “With my long hair and tattoos, I figured you could see through the uniform to the rebellious soul underneath.” He’s joking, but there’s a timber to his voice, a seriousness that he realizes is coming out because he’s bringing up his appearance to Louis, asking without asking, _I know you’ve looked at me, are you looking now?_

Louis clears his throat and rubs absently at the rip in his sleeve for a moment before murmuring, “Couldn’t see the tattoos, not until later...,” he trails off, the lines in his face seeming even sharper and more lovely in the dancing glow of the fire. Harry wonders how old he is, with his Peter Pan boyishness, his James Dean smile. He could be twenty-five but he _knows_ he isn’t, he graduated from the academy at least, and there's a shadow to the bags beneath his eyes that men only get with age, experience. Harry closes his own eyes and thinks of kissing those shadows, gently, like he could taste the life that Louis has lived in doing so. “Your hair, though,” Louis adds, gaze cutting to Harry. “I did notice that right away. How on earth did you get away with it?” 

“Well, you know how Starfleet pretends it’s really progressive? But not progressive enough to not give a shit about men having long hair?” Harry starts, tugging the curls in question free from his stretched-out elastic. They tumble down over his shoulders, smelling like wood smoke and ocean salt, dirty with sweat and earth. “If you call them on it, they’ll listen because the reputation of inclusion matters to the Federation,” he explains, fingers snagging as he combs them through his hair absently. “I said I couldn’t cut it for religious reasons. Lied, obviously, but—”

Louis cracks up, laughter high and wheezy and overwhelmed, like all the exhaustion and frustration of the day is coming out right now. It’s a good sound, loose and warm, and Harry wants to curl up inside it. “So you _lied?_ Harry, that’s terrible,” he chokes out, teeth flashing, lovely and sharp. “Not a stick in the mud at all.” 

Harry shifts closer, he can't help himself. They’re both leaning back, propped on their elbows, knees spread, until Harry tilts so that they knock together; it’s hard to feel real when Louis’s laughing beside him without touching him. He just wants…he wants to feel it. Skin and bone, a heartbeat under his palm. He shakes his head, thinking, _this is ridiculous_ , but thinking it doesn’t stop him from doing anything about it. “So what’s your story?” he asks, smiling at nothing, aware that his dimples are showing, that he’s so much, _too_ much, and Louis can probably tell. And it should worry him, but it actually just thrills him. 

“My story?” Louis asks, voice still lilting with laughter, buoyant and sharp. “I dunno if I have a story. S’only my first away mission, same as you….been on the Pegasus for less than a year. Wasn’t a stellar student at the academy, but I wasn’t a delinquent either. I dunno. I’m woefully mediocre, I think, much to m’family’s disappointment.” There’s a sobriety once he finishes, like all the mirth has drained out. He studies the fire thoughtfully, darkness in his eyes, and Harry shifts even closer, not wanting to lose Louis to this fire, to the night. He wants to keep him close. 

“No, not your _Starfleet_ story, not your career. Your real story,” he clarifies. “Why Starfleet to begin with, where you’re from. Where would you be, if you could be anywhere?” 

Louis turns to him then, the corner of his lips quirking up into a smile. “Anywhere? I’d like to be a big popstar or someone on Broadway, while we’re dreaming. I like to perform, but me dad was very much about all of us pursuing a practical career… _his_ dad was in the fleet and his dad before that. He met mum in the fleet, and I’m the eldest son with a whole _litter_ of baby sisters, so it was just sorta decided for me, before I was even old enough to know what I wanted, what I liked. We’re a legacy family, and I’m not about to let me mum down. So…I enrolled in the academy. Likely let’m all down anyway, was a lousy student, _am_ a lousy officer…look at me now!” he smirks humorlessly, cocking his head. “Crashed a shuttle my first time off the ship.” 

Harry swallows thickly, too many thoughts tumbling through his brain for him to process, everything happening too quickly for him to latch onto what he _really_ wants to say, how he wants to say it. “Erm,” he starts, shaking his head, brow furrowed. “There’s _no one_ I would rather be marooned with, just so you know. And it’s not just because you’re better at commanding than I am—”

Louis looks at him and cuts him off, joking, “Or my dashing good looks,” which _is not a joke at all_ and makes Harry feel _flayed_ , bleeding. 

“ _Yeah_ , or that…Louis, you’re a _great_ engineer. You repaired the life support systems with _nothing_. Well. With stone knives and bearskins,” he quips, and Louis smiles a little, so he continues, feeling bold, fever-mad as the fire crackles before them. “I sincerely doubt your family feels let down or disappointed by you at all…bet all your little sisters idolize you. And that your mum misses you because you’re wonderful to spend time around, I can vouch for that. Imagine if I was stuck here with someone _actually_ by the books…it would be dreadful. Instead, this is, like…a fun vacation instead of some miserable mess.” 

Louis smiles bigger, this time with teeth, and Harry’s stomach flips over. “Thank you, Harold,” he says after a moment, and his eyes are so soft, so _fond_. It’s hard to hold his gaze for very long without feeling lost, but Harry doesn't mind feeling lost, not when he’s already this far away from home, hurled out past the stars somewhere unfathomable, somewhere he couldn’t have even imagined, given all the imagination in the universe. He's already lost, but Louis Tomlinson is here with him, sprawled out by the fire, hair looking particularly auburn in the red hue of it. “M’quite glad I’m marooned out here with you, too. Even if you lied about your religion so that you could have hippie hair.” 

They laugh together again, and there’s no moon in this sky, only ribbons of white stars like the Milky Way ten times over, bright like fool’s gold through granite rock. 

\---

Harry’s fire dies down but doesn’t go out completely, reduced to a comforting warm flicker and a billow of smoke between them as they curl up to sleep. 

Louis creates a makeshift pillow out of his own torn, useless shirt balled up on top of the shuttle’s toolbox, and it isn’t ideal, but he’s so exhausted and wrung out from the day that it might not actually matter. He rolls onto his side away from the crackle of embers, blinking into the darkness surrounding them. He can hear Harry rustling, and before he can stop himself, he’s wishing, weirdly and idly, that the sounds were solid so that he could reach out and rest his palm atop the muted shift of Harry’s body over cooling earth. Not touching him as he moves but touching the sound of him moving. As if this is somehow more acceptable a thought to have alone in the dark. 

_You just want to touch his body,_ he reminds himself, scrunching his eyes shut, adjusting his limbs, and lamenting the inevitable crick in his neck that he’ll wake up with if he sleeps at all tonight. _You wish you were curled behind his back, smoothing a palm up his chest, over his heart. You wish you were breathing from his hair, rolling him over to kiss him, taste him. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do with him._

And it’s true, shameful and hot enough that just imagining it makes Louis’s stomach coil up guiltily, his prick twitching in his scratchy uniform trousers. He and Harry have been talking all night, _flirting_ all night, and whatever attraction he’s been feeling since they met has morphed effortlessly and massively into honest-to-god _feelings_. Harry isn’t just the type of man that Louis gets off on fucking, he’s the type of man that Louis would love to _date_ , hold all night, take home. _Be with_. It’s a monstrous thing, a want so big that it feels old, elemental. Like Louis has always felt this way in his soul of souls, an ache residing inside him quiet and dormant, waiting for him to just _meet_ Harry so that it could grow up through his throat, choke him. Fill him. Like he was just…made for this, and all that he had to do was realize it. 

He’s already told Harry about each of his sisters, already imagined him sitting on the floor of his family’s bungalow up in Doncaster around Christmas time, tinsel in his hair, the twins on either side of him or perhaps one in his lap, both chattering and giggling over his tattoos. He’s already imagined going on holiday with him, kissing him on the bow of a ship, up against the wall in a hotel room, on the balcony of some fancy San Francisco apartment overlooking the bay, even though they’d never honeymoon in the same city as the academy. 

It’s…it’s bad, is what it is. Louis is _like this_ , always ahead of himself because he so rarely ever wants any one man for any longer than a single night, a single no-strings-attached fuck. But here Harry is, with his twinkling eyes and dimples and voice like the soft and distant rumble of thunder, the promise of some far-away comfort. Louis wants him, wants him close and for a long time, and that’s an impractical realization to have when one is marooned on an alien planet. He feels like he can _have_ things because the real world and all that it carries with it is so, so far away. 

His eyelids are getting heavy so he lets them close, shutting out the night with more darkness, stars, and vegetation cast in the faint orange glow giving way to black. As he settles into the hard earth, he thinks of everything he’s learned about Harry, his life somehow mysteriously parallel to Louis’s own, aimless and lonely and small and northern, a green-grey childhood sandwiched in moors, well-meaning working-class families too close and claustrophobic. Harry longed for something more just like Louis did, a bigger life, stars and stars and stars, before they both realized that space is _cold_. Frozen, really, not the world of adventure and possibility that they both imagined for themselves. 

Louis lets himself wonder where they’d be if they had met before this mission. If Harry had come to him when they were schoolboys, transferred to his secondary school three whole years before Louis realized he was gay, Harry and his wide mouth, his glittering eyes. Would Louis have known sooner? Would they have become friends? Would Louis have forgotten his fear of letting his family down if he had known himself sooner, if Harry had given him something to orbit, save him from his aimless spinning? Or what if they had met at uni, when Louis had his first real boyfriend if only to _have_ a real boyfriend because the nameless club-sex was getting lonely, was making him feel older than he really was, washed up and washed out. Would he have stopped chasing dreams of space if he had met Harry and fallen in love with him then, if they had gotten an apartment together in London instead of transferring to the academy? What if they had adopted a dog, spent their mornings drinking coffee and sitting on a beat-up consignment couch with shitty upholstery, not caring that everything was second-hand or dirty because they had each other? What if Harry had gotten Louis into gardening, and every care or concern or inadequacy Louis had ever felt just melted away into the life they had together? Would Louis have cared about upholding his family’s legacy if he just…made a family of his own? Built something with Harry Styles, who he didn’t know would come into his life and change everything? 

Louis is not sleeping. 

He scrubs a palm over his face and sighs, knowing that he shouldn’t be imagining a shared imaginary past with Harry Styles, that he should focus on his future instead, the life he hasn’t lived yet. And maybe Harry Styles _can_ be a part of that, if they get out of this in one piece. Maybe, after the mission is over and the transporter is working again, and they get beamed back onto the Pegasus and their ranks matter less, something can happen. He’s fairly certain that Harry’s interested, too, at least. Louis can ask him out when they’re off duty, and they can start from scratch, build a new life, plant a new garden. 

Or maybe, once they’re back on the ship, the strange and preternatural sense of longing he feels for Harry will be changed by the artificial air, the life support systems. Louis sometimes thinks that true feelings can only exist under a sun, with dirt beneath his feet. That his life is on hold when he’s up in the air, that he can only really be a person again when he’s back on Terran Earth or during shore leave. Maybe the electricity keeping him and Harry twined will dissipate back on the ship, and he’ll have missed his chance to have something real with him, having never met him when they were kids, teenagers, young adults. 

Or maybe Louis’s just not meant to fall in love, and he’s imagining this whole thing, inventing it out of want, because Harry’s eyes are so pretty and his smile is so soft. 

“Louis?” Harry asks then, making Louis’s breath catch in his throat. “Are you asleep?” 

“No, not yet,” Louis mumbles, thinking _maybe not_. Imagining a future again, gardens and stars, stars and gardens. Harry’s hand in his own, his soft rumbly voice morning-scratchy against Louis’s throat. And he knows then, with the certainty that one knows he’s alive even if he’s not thinking about his heart beating, that this is real. “You, too?” 

“I just…I wanted to say...that m’so glad we met. This mission is shit, but as crazy as it sounds…feels like I was supposed to know you. And m’glad for it.”

Louis smiles, grateful for the dark because it’s an immense smile, splitting and moved and excessive. “Me, too,” he says, gently. “G’night.” 

“Good night, Louis,” Harry murmurs back. 

And Louis wants it badly, wants to hear it tomorrow and the next day and every night from here on out, his name in Harry’s voice, his seeds in Harry’s garden. 

Louis doesn’t even realize that he’s fallen asleep until he’s startled awake, heart pounding in his throat, cold sweat beaded on his bare chest. “Shh,” Harry whispers beside him, crouched down so that his voice is near enough to Louis’s ear to make him shiver. The fire has completely burnt down to ash, leaving nothing but shadows and the warmth of Harry’s body, solid and sweat-tacky and soft-hard all at once. Louis’s eyes flutter closed, and he stays still as Harry tells him, “There were footsteps and voices. The native species must have made it over to this part of the planet…which should be impossible, given their level of technology? Anyway, they couldn't _travel_ that far on foot, even if they were exceptionally fast, and the tricorder says—,” he cuts himself off as the voices pick up again. 

“Shit,” Louis hisses, scrambling to his feet and shivering. He grabs his balled-up shirt and pulls it over his head as Harry gets up, too, thinking it’s probably ridiculous that, in the midst of this crisis, he feels exposed enough that he needs to be _dressed_ , but he does. Harry’s close, it’s dark, and they aren’t _alone_ anymore. “Is that…is that a flashlight?!” he asks Harry, as a suspicious beam of light cuts through the night, bouncing off the slender trunks of trees, reflecting too much for him to make anything out. 

Harry squints in the sudden glow, stumbling backward and grabbing Louis’s elbow. “Yes? But…that means our readings on the ship were way off, this civilization is _definitely_ advanced!” 

One thousand thoughts course through Louis’s mind, all of their rationale colored by panic, exhaustion, sleeplessness, Harry’s _touch_. They stand together in the broken darkness while the light beams dance around them, close enough that if Louis tilted forward, he could press their brows flush, he could lean in and catch Harry’s mouth. “What if…what if they could help us repair the ship,” he wonders breathlessly, stomach plummeting as Harry feels for him in the shadows, lays his hands on his shoulders to steady himself, swaying close enough that Louis can feel his exhalations. “I mean, we won’t break the prime directive if they’re advanced, yeah?” 

“Right. Should I…should I flag them down?” Harry asks, before realizing that he’s just asked Louis, an _ensign_ , for command assistance. He shakes his head as if it didn’t happen, repeating his words more confidently, “M’gonna flag them down. You get the universal translator working.”

Louis nods curtly and wrenches himself away from Harry, dizzy with the proximity, the thrill of the unexpected. First contact is what the Federation is _built on_ , and even though Louis has never felt particularly connected to Starfleet propaganda, he’s still nervous, his heart is still thundering at the prospect of communicating with an alien race for the very first time. This isn’t their objective, it isn’t why they’re here or what they’re supposed to do, but if the native species is seeking _them_ out, all they can offer is diplomacy, peace. Maybe it’ll be beneficial. Maybe it’s safe. 

But he can’t help the little lick of panic in his chest as he hears Harry’s shout over the din of surrounding voices, the crash of footsteps through brush. “Hello…hello? I’m Lieutenant Styles of the Starship Pegasus…from the United Federation of Planets…and we mean no harm.” 

He’s met with silence, and Louis’s panic doubles, triples, grows until it chokes him. He’s powered up the shuttle’s computer, but he leaves it at that, not even bothering to deal with the translator because Harry…Harry’s alone out there with the unknown, and there’s nothing but the echo of footsteps and voices, and Louis’s a security officer as much as he is an engineer. It’s his job, and then there’s Harry. Harry, who snuck up on him. Harry, who deserves to be protected on any planet, in any universe. 

“Harry,” Louis yells as he staggers out of the shuttle, tripping as he goes. “Are you alright, have you…,” his voice dies, eyes reduced to slits in the harsh glare. The aliens are casting powerful lights on them and chattering amongst themselves in a complex, detailed language. It’s impossible to make out their appearances in the light, but Louis doesn’t care: Harry’s intact, just squinty and confused-looking, arms up to indicate his good intentions, face scrunched in defense. 

Louis stands in front of him, blocking his body from imaginary fire with his own. Just so that they _know_ , so that they see what they have to go through if they want to get to Harry. Louis’s dizzy; he feels _crazy_ , primal, adrenaline-sick with the madness of fight or flight. “Have they said anything?” he asks Harry. 

“No, nothing. Just advanced on me. Probably being cautious…I don’t think they’re hostile,” he explains in a hush before repeating himself, slowly and carefully. “I’m Lieutenant Styles of the Starship Pegasus. This is Ensign Tomlinson, my security office and engineer. We’re armed, but we come—”

The aliens suddenly erupt in discussion, and the footsteps pick up again. Louis’s hand falls to his phaser, just to be safe. He thinks the metal of it is wet before he realizes that it’s his own perspiration. 

Two humanoid figures emerge from the light, somewhat smaller built than your average Terran but otherwise indistinguishable. Louis’s heart pounds as they approach, and he doesn’t think that he can make himself speak, even if he means to, even if he had something to say. Once they’re within speaking distance, one of them gestures to Louis’s phaser before pointing to the ground between them, their dead fire, the makeshift beds. Louis stares, struck dumb, so fucking terrified that he’s moved beyond terror and into a strange, indescribable calm. 

“Your phaser,” Harry murmurs, similarly frozen. “She wants you to drop your phaser. That’s fair.” 

It is quite fair. Louis nods, managing to get out, “Right, right, sure. Just...here it is,” as he pulls the weapon from his belt and drops it onto the ground in front of him, nudging it through the ashy dirt with the toe of his boot. 

Then, everything happens so _quickly_. One of them bends to pick up the phaser, swiftly pocketing it, and the other is quite suddenly on Harry, forcing his arms behind his back and holding him fast. Louis has a split-second to see this and subsequently lunge for them in an attempt to _do_ something before that attempt is aborted, cut short by a solid and paralyzing blow to his stomach. He doubles over, sputtering, and then Harry disappears, everything disappears, the blinding light, the surrounding wilderness. All that’s left is a radiating pain from Louis’s gut and an engulfing blackness as one of the aliens puts a bag over his head and tightens the drawstring around his throat firmly enough so that it stays put without choking him. He hears Harry’s voice, hears him cry out in pain, and whatever rationality or ability to think or plan or retaliate against what’s happening drains from Louis, replaced by sheer panic, sheer _feeling_. Harry’s _hurt_ , and his job is _security_ and he’s _failing_ and there’s nothing he can do; he can hardly stand with the wind knocked out of him like this. 

They’re steering him somewhere as he yells and fights, voice muffled by a burlap type of material, scratchy on his face. He thrashes in the surprisingly powerful grip on his elbows that keeps him still while they bind his wrists crudely behind his back. 

Louis yells Harry’s name until he’s hoarse, until his throat feels bloodied and rough and his head aches and his cheeks are wet with frustrated tears. Nothing works; they don’t stop, they don’t acknowledge him at all. He's manhandled into the trunk of a vehicle, the subsequent rumble of its engine humming somewhere indistinctly below him. 

Harry’s nowhere, and Louis’s made of regret, chest heaving with wild, furious sobs. _There’s nothing you wouldn’t do with him,_ he thinks in the haze of pain and confusion, lungs burning as he desperately sucks in air. _And now there’s nothing you can do for him. You failed, and he’s gone._

Louis shuts his eyes tightly, and there’s nothing but endless black. 

—-

Harry doesn’t even know what happened, really. He just knows that his heart is in his throat, his head is pounding terribly, there’s blood crusted in his eyebrow, and Louis’s _gone_. He sits up, vision hazy and lit only by stars as he fumbles around uselessly, shaking all over. _Think, Harry, c’mon,_ he tells himself. _You’re in command. What would a captain do? What does Starfleet regulation dictate?_ Harry can’t even begin to remember regulation right now, can’t remember a single thing about what it means to command, every briefing or academy lecture on alien contact a hazy memory, lightyears away. 

All he knows (and this knowledge has been made starker and sharper in Louis’s absence, the heat in his chest lengthening into a barb, skewering him) is that he’s falling in love with Louis, fast and hard, and that regardless of command or regulation, he’s _getting him back._

Led by the certainty of this revelation, Harry staggers to his feet, brushing debris from his uniform socks. He needs his phaser, a tricorder. He needs to figure out _where_ the aliens took Louis, which direction they went. And as Harry takes inventory of himself and his (thankfully minor) injuries, it occurs to him that whatever they were told about this planet, whatever readings regarding the surface were collected back on the Pegasus, they were _wrong_. Not even close. The aliens here are advanced; they have an advanced language and enough technology to develop a motorized vehicle of some sort, since Harry’s fairly certain that whatever whisked Louis away had a fucking motor. Either Harry’s superior officers were keeping information from the landing party (unlikely), or something sinister is happening on this planet, something to interfere with the Pegasus’s readings. He shivers, fiddling pathetically with his tricorder until it clicks on. 

A strange, stoic calm has somehow settled over Harry, a willingness to face danger, a _desire_ to face it, even, as long as he finds Louis. He’s not even anxious as he loads up a canvas bag from the shuttlecraft with essentials, fruit and flint, in case he needs to make a fire. He’s clear-headed, resigned. He’s doing his job, yes, but he’s also driven by emotion, a primal need to bring his heart back to Louis’s, feeling like they belong together, like there’s a reason they crash-landed on this fucking planet in the first place. And maybe that’s absurd, maybe Harry’s hardly fit for duty as an idealist and a dreamer and a romantic, but whatever the motivation, at _least_ he’s taking charge of his command. Harry grinds his teeth, zips up his bag, and uses the illuminated screen of his tricorder to follow the pathway through the brush, where the vegetation has been trampled upon, run over. 

Dawn is breaking over the horizon, a lavender glow edging out to the faintest orange, stars still scattered in the watercolor haze of it all, like sugar, like snow. Harry casts his gaze to the sky and plots a course to the general area he recalls the civilization having been located, at least according to the Pegasus’s (likely inaccurate) scans. It doesn’t _really_ matter, he just needs somewhere to begin, a north star to guide his heart by. 

_You’re mad,_ he thinks, shaking his head, _for falling so hard and so quickly, like your own personal crash-landing. For all of this._ He’s not even telling himself such things as a warning or a reprimand, just as an observation.

Then, with his bag shouldered and the pounding surf of the ocean calling him closer, he starts off. 

Harry’s feet ache in his regulation boots, and he's twisted his ankle, like, six times already by the time the sun has properly risen, not to mention he’s thoroughly fatigued, dizzy, and exhausted. This is perhaps why he chalks up the person in the distance to a hallucination. 

Still, he stands, licking his lips and contemplating whether or not his dehydration has reached a critical point yet, trying to remember if seeing things is a symptom of dehydration at all, or if there’s something _else_ going on. He blinks, but the figure approaching him in the distance, partially obscured by palms and turrets of black volcanic rock, doesn’t disappear. 

Harry reaches for his phaser, well aware that he’s likely a terrible shot right now, that he’s shaky and thirsty and sunburnt, that his hair elastic broke hours ago and his curls are buffeting his face in the warm salty wind, that he can hardly even _see_. Still, he holds up the phaser, arms trembling, feet braced in the dirt. “I’m armed!” he shouts in a hoarse voice.

Shockingly, the figure shouts back _in Terran English_. Harry’s definitely hallucinating. “Don’t shoot!” the figure yells, holding its hands up, advancing ever closer with a prudent gait. “This, here?” the being says in a man’s voice, clear and deep and friendly as he holds an object above his head, something with wires and circuits and whatnot sticking out of it like some mad scientist’s experiment. If Louis were here, he might know what it is. But Harry isn’t an engineer, so he can only be skeptical and afraid of the thing, even as the man continues, “It’s a crude universal translator. It’s why you can understand me. Not a weapon, so lower yours, please? I come in peace.” 

Harry _can_ understand him, and there’s no plausible explanation for why some alien on this planet would be speaking English or why some Terran man would be stranded on this planet, too. Even in his state of dehydration-exacerbated delirium, Harry knows this. He lowers his phaser, continuing to blink, brow furrowed so deeply against the glare of the sun that his head is aching. “How did you get a universal translator?” he blurts out, which isn’t exactly _I’m Lieutenant Styles from the United Federation of Planets, and a member of my landing party has been abducted, can you help me?_ but he’s not exactly thinking clearly, so. 

“I made it,” the man tells him, eyes revealing themselves to be a twinkly, trustworthy blue now that he’s close enough for Harry to really get a good look. He’s twentysomething, maybe thirty, thin and fit and wiry, with an open, crooked smile and tousled brown hair. “You can call me Niall, by the way, and I’ve been looking for you and your people ever since your shuttle landed. Trying to get to you before they did, but from the looks of you, got here too late.” 

Harry shakes his head, suddenly overwhelmed with feeling, with _exhaustion_. Everything hurts, his chest most of all, his hand suddenly flying to it in a reflexive motion, like he might be able to touch the ache in his solar plexus, which has been throbbing ever since he lost Louis, since he _failed_ him. Harry wipes his eyes and tells him, “S’just me and one other man. They invaded our camp last night, whoever they were, and kidnapped him. I’m trying to find where they went, but my equipment isn’t working...it _says_ there are no life signs or civilizations here, but clearly, that’s not the case. I don’t know what’s going on. We’re here on a science mission, a _peaceful_ science mission,” he babbles, knowing full well that he’s babbling. Niall is looking at him with concern, mouth flattened out into a sympathetic line, and it only makes Harry spill more. “I’m Lieutenant Styles, from the United Federation of Planets, the USS Pegasus—“

Niall’s eyes get wide, impressed. “Oh, _Starfleet_? No wonder they made quick work of you two. Starfleet regulation parts are a highly prized commodity here.” 

“What’s _happening_?” Harry asks desperately, realizing that he's still holding his phaser. He pockets it, wiping his sweaty palms on his uniform slacks. “Why isn’t my tricorder working? How do you even _know_ about Starfleet?”

“It’s a lot to explain, but I promise that I’ll do the best I can,” Niall sighs. “As for your crewman, what’s his rank? What does he do?” 

Harry’s chest pangs at the mere mention of Louis, heart leaping up into his throat, mouth trembling. He hopes so desperately that he’s okay, but at the same time, he’s too worried to properly devote any thought to what might be happening to him. All that he can do is hope, and push forward, and hope and hope and hope. “Erm,” Harry starts, blinking, wiping his eyes, though they’re merely welled up, not fully leaking. “He’s an ensign. In the engineering department...a brilliant engineer.” 

Niall raises his eyebrows. “That’s good, then, explains why they want him. And they'll want him alive, most definitely, so you can rest assured that he's not in any critical danger. Gives us some time.” Relief washes over Harry, so powerful that his knees wobble, his breath comes out in an aborted gasp. He must look like he’s in danger of tipping over because Niall reaches out, steadies him with a warm hand on his shoulder. “You okay?” 

“Yes, yeah. Just...so glad. I was really worried,” Harry explains, righting himself. “I also probably need some water.” 

“I bet you do,” Niall agrees curtly. “My compound is only a mile or so away... think you can walk that far? We’ll get you water and provisions and explain some things. The group we’re dealing with…they aren’t bad people or murderers.They’re just…extremists, sort of? Your friend will be okay. He can wait.” 

Harry nods, knowing that he can’t complete a rescue mission without food or water, anyway. “Alright,” he nods. “We can go to your compound. And you can tell me what the fuck is going on here.” 

Niall throws his head back and laughs. “I’m glad to hear this situation reduces even Starfleet officers to profanity. Right this way, Lieutenant Styles.” 

And Harry has nothing left to do but follow. 

An hour or so later, Harry sits beside Niall on an ornate bench artfully hewn from a fallen tree, downing his third glass of water from a similarly carved wooden cup. Nearly everything here in Niall’s compound, which is basically a thriving village, seems to be either handcrafted or made from repurposed machinery. Harry’s a botanist, not an anthropologist, but from what he can gather based on observation alone, this _is_ a primitive society, but it wasn’t always so. There’s evidence of an advanced civilization now in ruin, foundations of old buildings, scuffed electronics now being used to prop open windows in crude huts, fences fashioned from engine parts, metal-alloy glinting in the sun as children chase each other around small groves of tropical fruit trees, shrieking and laughing. Harry’s curious, if not fascinated, but he’s more thirsty than anything else, so he just sits there on the bench, craning his neck to look at everything while Niall watches him watch, amused. 

After another cup of water, he wipes his mouth and inhales raggedly, finally ready to talk. “So,” he starts, setting the cup down on the bench beside him, hoping he’s acting polite enough for a first-contact situation. “I feel like there’s….a long story behind all of this.” 

Niall nods, cocking his head and laughing a little. “That’s one way to put it. I realize it must look strange from the outside…especially for a Federation boy like you. Isn't your whole thing about _progress_ and _exploration_?” 

Harry shrugs, knowing that he represents an organization but feeling very far away from it since he’s been on his planet, cut off from the communications channel, alone with Louis and the vast sky, the vast ocean. “Yes, that’s part of Starfleet’s overall mission…but we also have a noninterference policy? If you guys are, like, _choosing_ to live a certain way, it’s not our intention to interfere with that.” 

“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say we _choose_ to live this way. Or perhaps we do, but it was a decision born out of circumstance. The choice, actually, is where the conflict lies. Between us,” Niall explains, gesturing vaguely to the village, “and the extremist group who took your friend.” 

Harry’s heart clenches, mouth suddenly dry, “What happened?” 

Niall takes a deep breath, rubbing at his temples like he’s not even sure where to begin. “Well,” he starts. “Only a decade or so ago, we weren’t far off from where your Terran Earth might be in terms of development, just on a much smaller scale. We hadn’t quite reached warp capability, but we were on the cusp of that discovery, making significant gains in space flight, medicine. Weapons, unfortunately. There was a nuclear overload at a power plant that created a massive explosion. Around the same time, we were harvesting tremendous amounts of minerals from our soil and drilling for petroleum, severely depleting our natural resources. Our Spiritual High Council took the explosion happening concurrently with the depletion as a sign from our planet that progress was greedy, harmful. A decision was made to return to a simpler life, honoring our planet…which, I’m sure you’ve noticed, is quite beautiful.” 

“Absolutely stunning,” Harry agrees quietly. “Our mission…actually, was a soil survey. Our readings from the Pegasus told us that you had significant dilithium deposits, and we need dilithium for our warp core. We were taking samples to see if our readings were correct… you’re saying…it’s gone?” 

“Mined to nothing, essentially. The readings were likely a projection from forty, fifty years ago. See, here, in this compound? This is how the majority of our population lives now. Simply. Small agriculture, running water, generators for storms but otherwise only rudimentary electricity. We’re happy this way, for the most part, because it’s more important for us, culturally, to honor our planet. That’s the belief system that our Spiritual High Council was founded on and what it strives to uphold.”

“Very admirable,” Harry tells him, and he means it. “M’a botanist, it’s why I joined Starfleet, really….because I love plants. I love nature, it’s the thing I love _most_ , and I thought I’d sort of be gallivanting through space discovering new species, seeing things I’d never seen before…and really, there are a lot of planets and a lot of civilizations who don’t care about plants, at all. Overfarm, deforest. This is…it’s refreshing, really.” 

“Well, thank you,” Niall blushes, shaking his head, eyes cast down to his boots. There’s a sort of tiredness to his eyes, a heavy shadow beneath them, as if he’s remembering something painful, something that aches. “Not everyone here feels this way, though. Which is where the other faction comes in.” 

“The extremist group,” Harry murmurs, blood icing over as he thinks of Louis, Louis alone, Louis in danger, Louis anywhere but here. With him. “They don’t agree with the High Council’s decision? They still use technology?” 

“They still actively pursue it,” Niall clarifies, scrubbing a work-hardened hand through his hair, dirt crusted under the nails. “They preach what your Federation preaches, to some degree… _progress_. Exploration. They think the Spiritual High Council’s entire belief system, that the planet’s health comes above all else, is backward, archaic. They think the only way to live is to make advances in technology, in space travel, in weapons development. Even at the cost of the planet’s livelihood. So, they stole considerable raw materials and research from our old labs. Many of them were scientists, weapons specialists….they had access. They used what remaining technology we had left to create an illusion of what this planet really looks like and then project those readings into space to get picked up by traveling ships, like yours.”

“It’s why the Pegasus readings said this planet was resource rich, why there were only primitive life forms in the early stages of tribal development. They tricked us,” Harry realizes. 

“They didn’t just trick you,” Niall sighs, sitting back, casting his gaze skyward. It’s bright overhead, and he squints in the sun. “They interfered with your flight pattern. Brought your ship down.” 

Harry’s heart leaps up into his throat, chest suddenly tight, anxious, fearful. He’s remembering the crash, how Louis didn’t know what was going on, how everything happened so _quickly_. “There…there was an energy surge. We had no idea where it was coming from. They could have easily killed us,” he notes, shaking his head. “What were they even trying to _do_ , what was their goal in making us crash? We were on a _survey_ mission in a basic shuttlecraft...there was nothing at all of value onboard.” 

“Sure there was,” Niall replies. “There was a Starfleet engineer.” 

Harry’s blood ices over, and he feels sick. A powerful wave of nausea crashes over him, and he tilts forward, putting his head between his knees so that he can inhale raggedly, suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of fresh green grass, manure, sweat, salt-wind. It’s too much, he’s dizzy, he’s in command, still, but nothing is getting any easier, no clarity is presenting itself as Niall explains the mess of a hornet’s nest that they've stumbled into. “They…they want his help? Building things? Fixing things? What?” 

“I imagine they want a lot of things. I’m sure they planned on harvesting the parts from your craft today, but I sent a group of our people down to guard it. They're wanted for multiple counts, so they won’t go near it if we have officers posted there...they won’t risk arrest like that. Regardless, parts or not, they have leverage. I’m sure they’re hoping that the starship you two hail from is planning a rescue mission of some sort and that they can use your friend as a bargaining chip, as leverage. And he’s Terran, right?” 

“Yes,” Harry affirms, rubbing his face with his palms, hot and itchy and overwhelmed. “We’re both Terran, from the same country, even. Not too far apart.” It hurts to say it, this simple, truthful thing. He hates knowing that he and Louis could have met before all of this, even before the academy, before the Pegasus. Most definitely before this orchestrated crash and kidnapping that they stumbled into, unawares. _Terrible time to fall in love_ , he thinks to himself, before silencing the thought, refusing to give it weight. 

“See, Terran Earth is a tremendously developed planet,” Niall says. “Years ahead of where we were technologically, even decades. Warp capable, home to the Federation…a Starfleet officer, especially an engineer? They’d consider him quite the commodity.” 

“What do we do, then?” Harry asks miserably, hating that he, the commanding officer, is asking an _alien native_ such things. “How do I get to him? I’ve got to get him, you see, he’s my friend.” 

“Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly where they are, either. There are some caves down by the south coast, beyond that little craggy outlook that way, you see?” Niall points off to the right. “We think they’re somewhere down there, setting up an underground lab to continue their experiments. However, it’s impossible to get a proper read on them because they use their computers to scramble our data, too. We don’t have anything advanced enough anymore to hack through. It doesn’t matter, though, because they have all the firepower. Every time we get near the correct coordinates, they fire.” 

“But they wouldn't do that with me,” Harry realizes, sitting up straight, righting his shoulders. “I can…I can lie to them. Tell them Starfleet, we, erm…honor progress and exploration! That we agree with their mission and sympathize with their plight and.. .and want to assist. I can totally cite some bullshit clauses in the handbook and everything.” 

Niall looks thoughtful, then he rubs his palm over his mouth, nodding appreciatively. “It could work. They want to make a deal with you, so they don’t want you dead. That being said, they won’t _hesitate_ to kill you if they suspect foul play…they’re ruthless. Remember, they made you crash your ship and didn’t care one way or another if you died doing it. They’d have stolen your parts and called it a day. So what are you going to do when you or your ship can’t deliver?” 

“I’ll think of something,” Harry shrugs, desperate at this point to try _anything_ , as long as it gets him to Louis. “I’ll figure it out.” 

“Well, then,” Niall nods crisply, “I’ll lead you down as far as I can, close enough that you can find the way, but I’ll duck out before we’re within sensor range. Can’t have them thinking you’re siding with us.” 

“Perfect,” Harry sighs, so grateful and relieved that he could cry, just throw his arms around Niall’s neck and hang there. Instead he stands, offers his hand, and takes Niall’s in a firm handshake. “Thank you, really. This has been so, so helpful, I wouldn’t have… _couldn’t_ have gotten this far without you. I really appreciate it.” 

Niall smiles, blushes, shrugs. “Well, even us simple farm folk want to be in good standing with the Federation,” he jokes. “Anyway, it’s been my pleasure. You seem like a nice enough guy, worlds better than what I expected from Starfleet, to be honest. I’ll send some scientists down to your crash site...we still have plenty of people here in the compound who can repair a ship, even if they haven’t in a few years. We can try and get you mobile again, or at least get your communications up and running properly.” 

“That would be amazing, to have an escape plan,” Harry breathes out. “Really, Niall, I can’t thank you enough.” 

“Why don’t you follow me back to my place….I’ve got some tech that might come in handy for tracking your friend down. We don’t have weapons, but I could help you charge yours, at least. You don't want to go into an enemy camp unarmed.” 

“Thank you,” Harry says again, eyes prickly and overwhelmed. He’s feeling like he can’t adequately express his gratitude, like there aren’t words, so all he can do is repeat himself over and over again, a broken record. “Just...thank you so much.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Niall tells him, making a loose, easy motion in the air in front of him with one of those worker’s hands. “Always happy to help out a fellow botanist.”


	3. Chapter 3

Louis is in a cave and has a terrible headache, but beyond that, everything is shadows and blur and the distant roar of blood in his ears, or perhaps that’s the sea. He can _smell_ the sea, after all, somewhere faint and distant, and there’s a dankness to his holding cell that makes him suspect he’s either underground or somewhere near a substantial body of water. 

Around him there’s crushed granite and stalagmites…stalactites? He doesn’t know; he can never remember which is which. Harry would know, but he can’t _think_ about Harry right now, can’t let himself fall into that trap of anxiety and worry and longing. He needs to think about getting _out_ right now, and Harry clouds his mind, his judgment. He can be clarity at the end of this tunnel, but until the tunnel is cleared, there’s no use in getting bogged down in feeling. Escape is all Louis can afford to put energy into right now.

He’s in some type of crude holding cell with an invisible containment field keeping him in a four-by-four-foot space with nothing in it save for a beaker of water that he's been afraid to drink in case it turns out to be poison. He’s felt out the perimeter of the cell with his hands, and as a result, his fingers are still stingy and tingly from electrical shock. He’s thirsty, he’s dizzy, he’s bruised, he’s _lost_. He misses Harry Styles so very much that even though he’s not supposed to be thinking about him, he can’t stop imagining his absurd honking goose laugh or his expressive green eyes or the kind, slow way that he talks, like every word is precious. And even if he isn’t thinking about him actively, his gut still _aches_ with a powerful sensation, fear and regret and tenderness, and he knows that it’s because of Harry, or, because of Harry’s absence. 

_Gonna get you back_ , he thinks, plucking a quarter-sized stone off the dusty cave floor and pitching it toward the containment field, watching the blue sizzle of energy as it hits the invisible wall before it ricochets back to him. _Gonna get out of here, find you, and tell you. That it’s only been a day and some change, but that I believe things happen for a reason, and that I was meant to crash that shuttle and get stuck here with you, under this star-thick sky, atop this black sand beach. That I’ve never felt anything like this, that it scares me, but not more than it makes me want a future. And for you to be in it, if you’re interested. If you’ll have me._

Louis sighs, chest throbbing with each inhale, tight from crying, from _waiting_ here in this infernal space, left to hypothesize, to come up with a hundred failed attempts at escape, a hundred theories about _how_ he ended up stuck here with singed fingertips in the first place. 

It’s clear that the readings from the Pegasus about this planet and who lives here were wrong. Louis’s wondering, however, if that was by mistake or by design. _Clearly,_ the people who live here have far more advanced technology than originally projected…possibly even technology on par with that on the Pegasus. If they can create a containment field in a cave, it’s likely that they can also alter sensor readings or send illusions through space that in turn got picked up by the Pegasus’s computers. 

Louis isn't wondering _how_ ; he knows enough about engineering to know that it’s possible, to imagine the process by which such things could be done. Louis’s wondering _why_. 

Why would an advanced civilization want to fool traveling crafts into thinking that it’s in the primitive stages of development? Why pass up all those trade deals, those diplomatic negotiations, those military allies in the event that it needed defense? Unless, of course, this _is_ its defense. The people here could be separatists, isolationists, nationalists. Trying to preserve their culture and disguise anything they had to offer from passersby, unwilling to engage with Starfleet for fear of having their ideals interfered with, assimilated. Louis has read about similar cultures, USS Enterprise missions where planets refused to negotiate with or join the Federation for fear of having their singularities erased, watered down. His history is spotty, and it’s been a long time since he took a class on it, but those instances of first contact always stood out to him. Federation textbooks never framed them as failures, just as a different way to live, and interactions were rarely hostile. But here he is, sitting in a holding cell with _injuries_ , hungry and confused. Why do they want him, what do they want _from_ him? Is he a bargaining chip, a hostage? Is he going to get interrogated? Studied? Or just killed, collateral damage in some conflict that he doesn’t understand because he’s alien as much as they are? 

He tilts his head back against the damp stone wall behind him and sighs. None of the speculation matters until someone comes back and actually tries to _speak_ with him about why he’s here. _If_ they want to speak. He isn’t entirely sure of that yet, and the longer he stays here, blinking in darkness, stomach growling and head pounding, the longer he feels like he’s on borrowed time. 

Louis thinks that he imagines the footsteps, at first. After all, they’re shuffling and uneven and clumsy, and he's been in here long enough that he’s hallucinating sounds anyway, half-suspecting everything as a figment of his imagination, a symptom of being scared and isolated and dizzy and underground. Then there’s the near-constant and inconsistent drip-drop of water that he’s trying to _not_ hear and obsess over, so it isn’t until the footsteps are closer and actually _rhythmic_ that Louis realizes they aren’t something he’s fashioned from echoes and nothing. 

He sits bolt upright, scrambling to stand, disoriented in the darkness. That was _definitely_ someone walking, shuffling ever closer on unsteady feet. Louis wishes desperately that he had a phaser, but he doesn’t, so all that he can do is fit himself to the wall, pressing his back against the chill of it, and take slow, steady breaths to center himself. He’s not a fighter, but it doesn’t mean he won’t fight, _can’t_ fight. He can and he will, if that’s what it takes to get him out of this cell, this cave. He’ll swim the entire ocean if it takes him back to Harry. 

His breath catches in his throat, heart pounding so loud that he’s almost certain whoever’s out there stumbling around the cave can hear him. Then, cutting through its own echoes as it comes to find him, is his name. 

“Lou?” a low rumble calls, quiet and tentative and soft, like mourning doves cooing. Louis’s mouth goes dry, he sags against the cave wall, he very nearly _sobs_. Because that….that’s Harry. That’s Harry’s sweet, deep, uncertain call. 

“Harry?!!” he croaks, so hoarsely that he has to clear his throat so that he can say it again, this time with more conviction, more air. “Harry, here! M’in here.”

“Oh!” he hears, footsteps skidding to a stop. “Louis?! That’s you?” 

“Yes!” Louis yelps, turning left and right in the shadows, trying to hear Harry out, to locate him. It’s very nearly impossible, given the echoes, the darkness, and everything reverberating off the walls and making it sound like there are more than two of them in here. And he sincerely hopes that it really _is_ just the two of them because if not, it means that Harry’s _out there_ , exposed to danger, while he’s helpless behind these invisible, electrical walls. “I’d come find you, but m’stuck behind a containment field. Just…follow my voice.” 

“Fuck,” Harry grits out, Lieutenant Styles stripped of all his decorum, cursing blindly and loudly as he fumbles around, trying to find Louis, who actually _laughs_ at the absurdity of the situation, at what _terrible_ Starfleet officers they are, crashing shuttles and getting kidnapped and injured and separated like _cadets_. This is _such_ a disaster of a mission, and they aren’t in the clear yet, not by a long shot, but Louis can’t even care. There’s a shaky sort of relief washing over his body just at the sound of Harry’s voice shouting obscenities like he, too, is so _fucking_ glad that they found each other again. “It sounds so good to hear it,” he yells, and Louis’s frantic laugh gets caught in his throat, gets choked into a sob. 

“Yours, too,” he yells back. “Gonna keep talking...help you find me.” 

“I think…fuck, you sound so close, I’m coming,” Harry shouts. “And you’re okay? You aren’t hurt?” 

“A little banged up, some bruises and me uniform is torn to shit, but what can you expect from Starfleet regulation?” Louis quips, rubbing his palms over his face, hardly noticing that they come away wet with grateful, overwhelmed tears. 

Harry laughs, and it's _so close_ , a rumble on the horizon, like thunder rolling in on storm clouds. Louis’s stomach flips over, and _god_ , he just wants to _see_ Harry, see him real and whole and breathing. “My uniform’s falling apart, too. You think they provide sturdier ones for, like, _actually_ dangerous missions?” 

‘I hope,” Louis says. “God, I can’t…I can’t even tell you, Harry. How happy I am that you’re here.” 

“I can’t even tell _you_ ,” Harry’s voice echoes, closer, closer. “Can’t…fuck. I was going out of my mind...so worried that you were hurt, even after Niall said that you probably weren’t.” 

“Niall??! Did you make friends with my captors, Lieutenant?” Louis asks, voice wheezy, sharp as he shouts into nothingness. 

“Not your captors, no, I….I actually used my phaser on them. Stunned them, though, don’t worry, nothing the captain wouldn’t approve of,” he blurts out in a rush. “Ah, shit, I think I saw a flicker…can you throw something at the containment field?!” 

Louis is too thrilled and stunned by the idea of Harry Styles, the worst commanding officer that he’s ever served under, setting his phaser to stun and actually _using it on people_ to answer properly; his throat is too dry, too tight. He can hardly imagine Harry successfully aiming, firing, and _hitting a target_ ; the idea makes him hot-faced and overwhelmed, so he’s trembling and smiling wildly as he bends down, palming over the ground until his fingers bump up against another rock. He dusts himself off before tossing it at the field, and it bounces off, momentarily lighting the cave with a flash of electric blue. 

“Ah! I can see you. Do it again,” Harry orders, and Louis obliges, listening intently as Harry’s footsteps pick up to a jog, and he draws closer, closer. Finally, after the fourth stone striking and sizzling before it falls back down to the earth, Louis _sees him_ , his tall, gangly body just a shape in the brief illumination. He sobs wordlessly, carding a hand through his hair. 

“I can see you,” he rasps, voice hoarse. “I’m right here...right here.” 

Harry’s tricorder screen flashes, showing a glimpse of his lovely face in the faint glow. “You are,” he murmurs, close enough that Louis can _hear_ the whisper of his breath, close enough that they might bump into each other if there was nothing keeping them apart. “How far does the containment perimeter extend? M’I gonna run into it?” 

“No, you can come here...it’s pretty tight quarters. You have about three feet before you get close,” Louis explains, voice soft, fractured. Then, the cave lights up in a sudden flash of blue because Harry is reaching out to touch the field, eyes squinted in the harsh bright of it all, nothing but slits as he regards Louis, mouth parted and lovely and stunned, as if it doesn’t hurt at all. “What are you—stop! You’ll hurt yourself,” Louis barks, as incredulous as he is moved. 

Harry’s hand falls away, and they’re cloaked in darkness again, the faint odor of smoke hanging in the air. “Sorry,” Harry whispers. “I needed to see you.” 

Not, _I was testing the field_ , or, _I wanted to see how strong it was_ , or, _I was checking for an injury._ Harry _needed to see him_. Louis’s heart flutters, nearly choking him silent as it leaps. “Did you burn yourself?” he asks gently. 

“Not badly. I don’t mind pain,” Harry tells him, as if it’s a careless, idle thing that he’s been hurt just so that he could _see_ Louis. “There’s nothing in there with you, nothing big enough to toss through?” 

“No, nothing. They gave me what I _think_ is water, and I could potentially toss it onto the field generator if I saw it, but if there is one, I have no idea where it is. S’not worth electrocuting me’self over, so I’ve just been sitting here, trying to think of another option.” 

“How long can you stand the pain?” Harry asks curiously, voice so smooth, so soft in the dark. Louis feels so much better just _knowing_ that he’s here, an arm’s width away, like he can take any amount of pain if it means getting on the other side of the field. “Because I could shoot it with the phaser beam, which would be enough energy to rupture it, I think, if you could get your hand or elbow or _something_ through the gap?” 

“I don’t see what other options we have,” Louis sighs, body already recoiling at the idea. “I’ll try and go quickly. Erm…aim it at where it meets the ground, should be weaker at the contact point.” 

“Right,” Harry says, voice shaky. “And this will work? You won’t get electrocuted? Because if I electrocute you…,” he trails off, swallowing noisily. 

“No, there isn’t enough charge to do any real damage. It’s just gonna hurt,” he explains. He can hear Harry nodding as he gives him the platitude, the nervous shuffle of his big hands around the phaser. He wonders how many times Harry Styles has even fired a phaser before today; Louis suspects that it isn’t something science officers who specialize in alien _botany_ get much experience with. It wasn’t even until Louis spent a decent amount of time as a security officer that he got used to being regularly armed, the weight of the phaser on his thigh while he and Zayn worked in the Jefferies tubes repairing circuitry. This all must be so strange and new to Harry, and he feels for him. “Hey…s’okay. You aren’t gonna hurt me...phasers are only dangerous if they’re overloading or set to kill.” 

“It won’t overload when it hits the field?” Harry asks, feet shuffling along the ground. 

“No. Just do it...get me out of here, Lieutenant,” Louis tells him, and it doesn’t sound unlike an order. _Please_ , he thinks. _I just want to hold you_. 

“Fuck,” Harry whispers, taking a deep breath. “Okay, you ready?” 

“Yes,” Louis answers, and Harry fires. 

It ends up being less climactic than originally anticipated. It takes Harry several tries to get the angle right, and when he _finally_ does, Louis can’t just push through, he has to genuinely _claw_ at the opening, dispelling the electrical connections, flinching away each time because, _fuck_ , it hurts, reminds him of the time he went to an aquarium in London when he was a child and put his hand inside a cloth hole in the wall to feel what an electric eel’s shock was like. It’s _bearable_ , but it’s less than pleasant, and Louis’s already exhausted and jumpy and reactive from everything else he’s been through in the last 24 hours. 

When he eventually manages to get through, teeth grit against the pain, it’s an almost indescribably bizarre sensation, and he has to just lie there in the dark for a moment, panting, while Harry drops to his knees beside him. “You did it, you’re through,” Harry breathes, like he’s not even sure that Louis’s real, laying a tentative hand over the rapid-fire, terrified beat of Louis’s _electrocuted heart_. “Are you alright?!” 

The rest of him still tingles, but the skin beneath the grounding weight of Harry’s broad palm is warm, solid. Louis breathes out into the pressure, aware that Harry’s touching him elsewhere, too, gently smoothing his hair, down his arm. “I’m wonderful,” he admits, reaching out with his own tremulous hand to press Harry’s into him, to contain his own heartbeat. “You rescued me.” 

“Ensign Tomlinson, damsel in distress,” Harry jokes, eyes wet and dark and crinkled at the sides, semi-illuminated now that the field is damaged and won’t stop sparking, giving them a low, flickering light to regard each other by. “Can you stand? Wanna get you out of here and back to the shuttle as soon as possible…before the stun wears off or someone notices what’s happening. I’ll explain on the way, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Louis rasps. “I can stand. Can’t wait to hear the details of this fabulous rescue operation. So much for you not knowing how to command, you’re probably gonna get _promoted_ now, after this amazing and courageous feat.” He’s teasing, and Harry (who’s so fucking lovely, hair tumbling in a mess around his shoulders, uniform ripped, dirt smudged onto his smiling cheeks) laughs softly, but there’s a weight to everything he says as it leaves his lips, like the words know that they’re worth something. Admissions, confessions, plated in gold. 

Harry stands, offers a hand, and pulls Louis to his feet with some difficulty. And as soon as Louis’s on his feet, he can’t wait anymore, doesn’t even remember why he’s supposed to. He throws his arms around Harry Styles’s neck and pulls him close, the whole of his long, angled body slamming solidly into Louis’s with a soft _oof._ Harry’s surprised, and for a split-second just stands there, stunned, but he recovers himself quickly and grips Louis, tight, _tight_ , tighter than Louis has ever been held, perhaps, strong arms wound crushingly around his lower back, squeezing him so tightly that he can’t breathe. 

“I…fuck, m’sorry, I just needed…I was so worried, Harry. When they took me away from you...was so scared,” Louis babbles, saying more than he means to, but he doesn’t _care_ , he can’t, he’s dizzy and hungry and exhausted and everything hurts and he just _crawled through a wall of electricity_ , but it doesn’t matter, Harry’s _here_. In his arms, trembling a little with shaky, choked inhalations, palms smoothing up his back, gripping him like he still isn’t sure that Louis’s real. “M’real,” he assures him, pushing his face into Harry’s dirty, wood-smoke-smelling hair so that he can get his words up against the shell of his ear, so that he can breathe from him. 

And then something cracks. Harry lets go and swears, looking over his shoulder as if there might be someone watching before his gaze cuts back to Louis, eyes so vast and pupil-black that he's like a starless sky, endless and sprawling. Louis’s breath catches, and then Harry’s taking him by his shoulders and steering him up against the wall of the cave, pressing him into chilled stone with his thumbs biting into his shoulders, broad shoulders rounded, chest heaving. 

_What?!_ Louis wants to ask, but he can’t unstick his throat enough to speak; he’s staring at Harry’s mouth, his soft, chapped lips parted and so fucking pretty, and he wants to bite them, wants to suck on them, wants so many things, but he can’t get a hold of himself to even _begin_ to ask for them because suddenly Harry’s brow is grinding into his own, his breath huffing hot and damp. “I want to kiss you,” he starts, eyes fluttering closed, lashes so lovely against his cheek, and, _fuck_ , Louis’s stomach _plummets_ , “I want to so fucking badly. Just...tell me. That it’s okay. Or not, and I’ll stop—” 

“No, _no_ ,” Louis interrupts, nothing but heat and longing coiling low in his gut as he twists his fingers into the coarse fabric of Harry’s uniform, dreaming of the skin underneath. “You better fucking kiss me, Harry Styles.” 

And he does. Stars explode, a whole galaxy of them, erupting in an eternity of pointillized lights that blur into a single streak of white, until there’s nothing but a blinding sear of heat as Harry’s mouth opens, and Louis can finally, finally fucking _taste_ him. 

And there’s Harry’s thigh wedging itself firmly between his own, and Harry’s big hands grappling across his back, and Louis thinking _yes, yes, yes, fuck, god, finally_ as Harry’s sweet mouth crushes against his own, so hard that it’s almost punishing, his teeth making it solid, making it hurt. 

They kiss like it’s fighting, just for a moment, so frantic and full to the brim with a primal sort of want that it breaks like a wave against the shore, and they’re both drowning in it, tongues ruthlessly, rhythmlessly swirling, bodies grinding together, Louis straining his sore back as he stands on his tiptoes to brace himself against Harry’s weight crushing against him. It doesn't matter that it’s clumsy, though, it feels _right_ , planets converging after having traveled days, months, _years_ on a collision course. They kiss and kiss, finally slowing down enough so that Louis can pull away to gasp before cupping his palms on either side of Harry’s flushed face and bringing him back in, biting him, sucking his tongue. “Fuck,” he breathes, tugging at a fistful of curls. “I’ve wanted that since I met you in the transporter room...s’gotten worse every second since then...you’re fucking _unbearable_ ,” he pants, thumbing over Harry’s cheekbones, his temples, his arched, lovely brows. “Unbearable.” 

Harry groans low in his throat, nosing along Louis’s stubble-rough jawline, tongue smoothing out over the ripple of his Adam’s apple. “I’ve wanted it since I first saw you. Which was, like…weeks before the mission.” 

Louis laughs breathlessly, skin all tingly with goosebumps from the low rumble of Harry’s voice, from the whisper of his exhalations. “All that time?! Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you _talk to me_?”

Harry shrugs, big and solid as he mouths back up Louis’s neck, making him shiver before he kisses him deeply again, lips so big and plush and spit-slick that it makes Louis dizzy. When he pulls away, gasping, he admits, “I’d leave the rec room if you were there...I’d ask my superiors to change up the duty roster…god. You made me so nervous…but here you are, can’t believe it...you feel so fucking good,” Harry babbles, palming over Louis’s back, shoulders, down to his ass, squeezing in needy fistfuls. 

“I’m glad I fucking crashed our shuttle, then, so that you _had_ to talk to me,” Louis groans, arching his back and grinding against Harry’s thigh, feeling light-headed and hot-cheeked at all the things that he wants to _do_ to him, how much he wants his skin, to lay him out on his back, get his mouth on his cock, his fingers inside of him. “God, Harry...want every bit of you so badly. Need to get off this godforsaken planet,” he curses. 

Harry shudders, peeling away from Louis with much difficulty. “S’much as I want to just stand her and kiss you until I die, that phaser stun isn’t gonna last forever. We need to get out.” 

Louis nods, even though he’s in a haze, even though he has half-forgotten why he’s here, what's going on. Harry's kisses felt like rain against a parched desert, and he wants _more_ , he _needs it_. He shakes his head, palming over his face to feel the flush with a muted sort of awe. “Right. You, erm, remember the way out? Or were you just blindly fumbling around in here?” 

“Niall, who m’gonna tell you about later, programmed my tricorder to track the specific sort of technology that they used for the containment field. It took energy away from the flashlight, which made it absolutely useless in that regard, but I was able to home in on the field’s signal. But…I bet you could delete that software, right? So that we could get power back into the light?” 

“I could,” Louis assures him. “Give it here.” 

As Harry passes him the tricorder from his belt, their fingers brush, and it sends such a tremendous volt of sensation into Louis’s body that his stomach lurches, his hand burns. He shakes his head. “I can’t wait to get out of here. Just want…want you properly,” he grumbles, fiddling with the tricorder. 

Harry sidles up to him then, thrumming with a giddy, ecstatic sort of energy as he rests a hand on Louis’s shoulder, squeezing. “You can have me however you want. Just...let’s survive this, first,” he murmurs. 

Louis shivers, tilts into the touch, and gets to work. 

—-

By the light of the tricorder, they end up finding a tunnel out through the back of the cave, circumventing the site of the stunned guards. It’s a relief, and Harry’s trembling with adrenaline by the time they sneak out and into the crisp chill of the air, sidling along sharp, sea-sticky volcanic rock as they try and keep out of sight. There are signs of life but no actual people, and the tricorder is only picking up the stunned guards back at the cave, so Harry suspects that they might have a clean shot at getting back to Niall’s compound unbothered. 

They climb up a steep embankment, sinking ankle-deep into sandy earth that spills over into their boots, wet and cold. There are clubs of dune grass dotting the hillside, and it’s rooted deeply enough that they can take fistfuls of it to heave themselves up the side of the hill. Harry’s fingers are raw and bleeding by the time they make it to the clearing above, staggering in the salty air. He keeps staring at Louis’s profile as they crouch in the brush, even though he should be looking for threats. It’s just that Louis’s _so_ beautiful, has such an angled, perfect profile, and only moments ago, they were _kissing_. 

Harry's stomach drops the second that he remembers it, the _heat_ of it, the force, the filthy, scraping things that Louis said. It almost seems too good to be true, like it didn’t happen at all, and Harry would be second-guessing himself if he couldn’t still _taste_ Louis, feel the burn of his stubble still faintly stinging on his chin, his upper lip. He can’t wait to have it again, _needs it_ , even, and everything else seems less real by comparison, somehow. 

“You see anyone?” Louis asks, scanning the horizon and squinting with a furrowed brow. “Tricorder says that we’re clear, but I don’t trust _anything_ mechanical anymore, ‘specially not on _this_ planet. Fuck technology, the lot of it.” 

“Tricorder says the coast is clear, so I say we make a run for it. You ready?” Harry asks, flexing his bloody fingers in front of himself, wincing before wiping them on the grass. Louis notices, makes a face, and takes Harry’s hand carefully in his own, turning it gently palm up so that he can examine the damage. 

“Oh, love,” he says softly, and, _Jesus_ , that might be a common endearment for a Yorkshire boy, but the intimacy of it, the raspy honey-tones of Louis’s voice, _all of it_. Just. Harry’s heart clenches, his stomach drops low and hot, and he shakes his head because surely it’s a miracle that this is happening to him. “Let’s cross this clearing and get some of that magic vine, and then I’ll fix your fingers up, yeah? This from climbing?” 

Harry nods, mumbling, “Guess I was gripping too tightly, or maybe you have better callouses than me—,” but his voice dies as Louis tenderly folds his fingers toward his palm, lifts his fist, and kisses his knuckles. 

“You should have excellent callouses,” Louis whispers, breath hot, a visible puff in the cold, night air. “Since you’re a gardener and all. Pulling weeds and things.” His lips brush against Harry’s skin, and that alone is overwhelming, gut-churning, so Harry actually gasps when Louis adds, “Can hardly even look at you without wanting to tip you over, put you on your back, and just…snog you silly. I feel like a teenager, it’s mad.” 

Louis shakily inhales then, letting it out in a measured sigh, and Harry can _smell_ the want on his breath, the restraint. And yes, it _is_ mad, it’s mad and it's _wonderful_. “Botanist, not a gardener,” he corrects, grinning, cocking his head. “And I wear gloves when I garden, anyhow.” Louis looks at him, amused, arched eyebrows and blown pupils that get even darker when Harry adds, “You make me crazy, by the way. I’d let you…I’d let you put me on my back. I’d let you do a lot of things if we weren’t, like, sneaking around behind enemy lines.” 

“Right, fuck,” Louis stutters, shaking his head and pressing a final, fleeting kiss to Harry’s knuckles before dropping his hand. “You have to keep me on track, Lieutenant.” 

And as they stand on unsteady legs to bolt across the last clearing to the heavy vegetation that he _knows_ is part of the outskirts of the extremist group’s territory, Harry’s heart feels like it’s bursting, like the whole of the night sky is inside him, all of the blackness and all of it’s stars. 

They make it, crashing through the brush, winded and wheezing as they stagger. Harry’s heart is pounding with adrenaline, so high in his throat that he can’t speak, but Louis slaps a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, guides him with a firm hand and tight, lurching steps, even though he doesn't know where they’re even going. It’s terribly endearing, and Harry giggles when he gets his breath back, leaning into Louis’s side, just wanting so badly to _feel_ the heat of his body now that he knows that he can. “This way,” he says, gesturing. “There’s a trail.” 

And as they pick out and start along that trail, Harry tells Louis everything. About the planet’s history, the explosion, the over-mining, the council’s decision, the subsequent cultural divide. He tells him about the extremists’ use of technology, the projection, how the energy surge and crash weren’t Louis’s fault, not one bit. Louis listens attentively, nodding at the appropriate bits, holding his questions until Harry finally gets to the end, announcing, “So Niall walked me to the perimeter, I lied and told them I was ready to negotiate a trade with the Pegasus, and then I stunned them when they came close. Niall helped cloak the weapon signature so that they didn’t know I even had it…and fuck. I was so nervous I was gonna miss, it’s amazing that I hit them at all.” 

“Amazing, truly amazing,” Louis laughs, reaching out and squeezing Harry’s elbow before pulling him close enough to press a kiss to the bare, dirty square of skin exposed by Harry’s torn uniform. “You’re amazing,” Louis adds, and Harry can only beam. 

“I thought I was going to have to lie and play the diplomat. I don’t think we were at their main headquarters, though, so there weren't that many guards…they locked you up somewhere far away from their equipment, probably trying to be stealthy. Made things easier for me,” Harry shrugs, reaching up and rubbing absently at the place where Louis had just pressed his lips. 

“And you aren’t worried that they’re just getting reinforcements to find and kidnap us again?” Louis asks skeptically, looking over his shoulder. “They came and found us once, so what’s to stop them from doing it twice?” 

“Niall said they won’t pursue us as long as we’re near his compound. They’re wanted fugitives...they’ll bring a ship down into the middle of nowhere to salvage or kidnap the crew, but they aren’t going to barge right into the compound and get themselves arrested,” he rationalizes. 

“And the shuttlecraft? Think they’re there, tearing her apart?” Louis asks, wincing like the idea of the ship getting destroyed hurts him, even though he _supposedly_ hates space, hates engineering. Harry grins at him, stunned at how every little thing about someone seems miraculous when you’ve fallen in love. 

“Nope, Niall sent some people….engineers, actually...to fix it up. See if she can move or at least if we can bring system communications online again, to contact the Pegasus and see if the transporter has been repaired.” He can see Louis’s confusion, the way that his brows knit together, and adds, “They’ll do technology things if that means getting us up in the air and home. They won’t, like, do it for their own personal gain. To protect the planet. Admirable, right?” 

“Very. To be honest, I wish Terran Earth had done the same thing in the late twentieth century….maybe the eugenics wars wouldn’t have happened. Seems like a no-brainer, in some ways, protecting the planet. Also, I can’t believe you said ‘do technology things.’ You’re too much.” 

“Hopefully, too much charm and humor?” Harry asks, waggling his eyebrows, and Louis cracks up, throwing his head back and hip-checking Harry playfully, _lovingly_ , even. 

“Too much everything. In the very best way,” he clarifies, and Harry’s heart…it could burst. 

They walk side by side in semi-silence, elbows bumping and heads ducked to hide stupid, reflexive smiles. Harry keeps tilting his gaze up to look at the stars, then back to Louis, who’s sometimes looking right back at him, other times grinning at his boots. It has to be late by the time they reach Niall’s compound, and Harry’s knees are aching, but he’s still wide awake, even as he’s exhausted. There’s still adrenaline thrumming through him, plus the electricity of just being _close_ to Louis, sharing his air, knowing that he wants him _back_. All of it has his heart in his throat, worlds away from sleep when the promise of so much _more_ lingers just beyond the horizon. 

Niall greets them in the cramped vegetable garden outside his model home, grabbing Harry’s shoulders and dragging him into a fierce hug as soon as he’s close enough. “Wonderful! You’re back in one piece, mate…lost your signal at some point and worried a bit, but here you are!” he exclaims, face open and smiling, bright even in the darkness. “Hope they didn't rough you up too badly,” he says then, gesturing to Louis, who has been politely standing beside the fence, arms crossed behind his back in an at-ease stance. 

“Not too badly, half of this is Harold’s fault anyhow,” Louis jokes, reaching for Niall’s hand and shaking it firmly. “M’Ensign Louis Tomlinson, pleasure to meet you. Heard a lot about you...we’d have died ten times over if it weren’t for you and your people helping us out. So...thank you. Starfleet is in your debt, I suppose.” 

Niall shrugs dismissively. “We’re responsible for your kidnapping and injuries, so I’d say that we’re even. Shame you couldn’t have enjoyed what our planet has to offer under better circumstances.” 

“How’s the ship looking?” Harry asks. “Any progress? M’sure Louis could have a look at it and work alongside your engineers—”

“Communications should be online by morning. In the meantime, you’re welcome to sleep here...we have guest lodgings just up the road. And if you want to enjoy a night swim, there’s a private cove about a mile down the shoreline…you might enjoy it, Harry, as a fellow nature enthusiast. It’s sort of our point of pride. See, the ocean _glows_ in that cove.” 

Louis furrows his brow, and something in Harry’s chest leaps. The feeling of being a little boy again, of thumbing through dusty, old library volumes and learning about the Maldives, about marine biology. “Is it a bioluminescent organism?” he blurts out, and Louis giggles, murmuring, _A bio what?_ under his breath, soft and sweet and teasing. “Phytoplankton, maybe?” 

“A bioluminescent algae, actually. Accumulated in the waves...it creates a crazy glow under the moon on some nights, if you're lucky. You should check it out…after all, you’ve been here on business. Might as well experience some recreation, too, right?” 

“Right, recreation,” Louis smirks, eyebrows arched and sly and, _oh_ , Harry’s stomach drops right there, leaving him feeling breathless. “I could really use some food and water, but after that…fancy a night-swim, love?” 

The _love_ comes so easily this time that neither Harry nor Niall, who knows nothing of the nature of their friendship or professional dynamic, bats an eye. Like this is natural, like this is how they _are_ with each other, like this is how it has been and should be and will be, forevermore. Harry grins, leans into Louis’s side, and says, “Sounds perfect.” 

\---

The cove is very, very private. It’s protected on three sides by sharp, black rock, jagged and textured, likely from the way the tide beats against it, crashing just outside the cove so that the waves inside are smoother, gentler as they roll up toward the beach. 

And Niall…wasn’t exaggerating or using a figure of speech. The ocean really _does_ glow here, a strange, luminescence on each wave crest, a blue radiance like blood under a blacklight. It’s insanely, unearthly beautiful, so much so that Harry gasps softly and puts his hands over his mouth when they first see it, and Louis murmurs a small, awed “wow,” eyes stinging in the salty air as he watches, fascinated by the still-glowing foam that each wave leaves on the beach as it retreats. 

Now Louis’s standing with his arms crossed over his chest, caging in the wild thrum of his heart as it beats itself half to death on the inside of his ribcage. He’s watching Harry Styles undress by moonlight, peel his ripped science officer blues over his head, hair a wind-tousled mess of static as he shakes it out. His skin is pale, very nearly silver under the star-bright sky, and Louis wants to put his mouth over every dark tattoo, map Harry out in bite marks, in kisses. There are so very many things he wants, a want so massive that it feels paralyzing as he stands, bare feet very nearly burning on the black sand, which is still hot from the sunlight that it sucked in and retained all day. 

Harry looks over his shoulder, eyes glinting in the dark, stomach-turning in their mischief. “Are you coming?” he asks, hooking his thumbs into his unbuttoned uniform trousers and pulling them down the soft swell of his bum, over his thighs. Louis stares because he can. Because he wants to. “You’ve already seen me naked, is that, like…did we break some weird rule by going out of order? Is all the mystique of my _unveiling_ gone?” he jokes, all star-lit dimples and long, coltish legs that are somehow both soft and bony all at once. Louis wants them around his waist, propped on his shoulder. He wants to curl his fingers around the tuck of Harry’s ankle. 

“Well. M’ogling you, aren’t I? Guess I’m not one for mystery…,” Louis trails off, because Harry is _looking_ at him, hazy and moved, so serious that it _hurts_. 

“Last time…the first time we went in the ocean? I tried not to look at you, but I did anyway,” Harry confesses, moving his hair from one shoulder to the other carefully. “I think you’re fucking perfect…so perfect. You’re exactly my type, it doesn’t even seem, like...possible.” 

Louis wants to stride across the few narrow feet of black beach separating them; he wants to pull Harry Styles into his arms and kiss him breathless. He feels rooted in place, though, stuck and acutely aware of the fact that Harry’s _naked_ , that if Louis touches him right now, there will be so much _skin_ , hot and sweat-tacky and, _fuck_ , Louis’s cock twitches just thinking about it. “I looked at you, too. I was almost, like…mad. You were so gorgeous.” Harry laughs incredulously, teeth a white flash in the dark, and Louis adds, “Obviously, I think you’re perfect, too.” 

“Swim with me, then? Please?” Harry asks, turning so that Louis can see him, _all of him_ , the dark thatch of curls between his thighs, his soft, uncut cock, mouth-watering and so fucking hot that Louis has to scrub his hands over his face, feel the fire of his blush. “M’just _standing_ here, starkers, and you’re in all your clothes, and…fuck. I wanna see you.” 

Louis makes a face and unceremoniously pulls his shirt over his head, shucks his trousers and pants, and hops all over the sand because his body still aches from his time spent in captivity, and bending over _hurts_. He can feel Harry’s eyes on him, and he _should_ feel self-conscious, but he just…doesn’t. There’s something about the moon, something about the soft, blue glow of the sea, all of this light where there should be no light, one of so many impossible things following them here that none of this….none of it feels real. Louis rights himself, and Harry shakes his head. “So lovely,” he murmurs, voice nothing but a low, thick rumble. 

Louis adjusts his hair before he takes Harry’s hand ( _so big_ , his wide palm and broad knuckles, the way his fingers slot so neatly into Louis’s), and together they wade into the surf. 

It’s colder than Louis expected but still tolerable, and as the peculiar glow licks around his shins, he wrinkles his nose. “Are there, like…alive things? Making it like that? Glow worms?” 

Harry giggles, squeezing his palm. “No. Just algae...it’s a plant, and even then, it's just microscopic bits. You’re safe.”

Once they’re waist-deep, Louis reaches out and spreads his fingers under the water, stunned by the way that he can _see_ , even in the dark, his hand visibly lit in strange, incandescent blue. “S’fucking _weird_. Eerie, like,” he mutters through chattering teeth, and then he can’t speak at all because Harry’s pushing out in front of him, ducking under and coming up with his hair a dripping mess all over his face. The water runs down his body in rivulets, and Louis tracks them, allowing his gaze to sweep down the sharp, slick V of Harry’s obliques. It’s hard to talk when Harry’s just…naked there, right in front of him, magic water or _not_ , and Louis licks the salt-bite from his lips, dunking under after Harry to cool himself, his head. He’s not sure what exactly they’re _doing yet_ ; he knows that Harry wants him as much as he wants Harry, wants him _back_ , but he isn’t sure if he can _touch_ , what’s okay, what’s off limits. He surfaces, sputtering in the cold, and Harry’s closer now, studying him with careful intent. Like he’s wondering what he can get away with, too. 

“Hi,” Louis grins, wiping water from his eyes and shaking his hair out. “S’cold.” He cocks his hip, well aware that he’s standing in shallower water and that _everything_ is visible, that when Harry looks at him, he’s not just _looking_ , he’s _seeing_. And he’s drinking it in, _all_ of Louis’s body, bruised and exhausted and lit in ultraviolet blue from this strange sea. Louis hopes that he likes it, pretending that he doesn’t care one way or the other, that it doesn’t feel weird and scary and vulnerable to bare himself to Harry Styles under this alien moon. He _knows_ that they’ve kissed already, touched, talked about what they want to do to each other when the time is right, when they finally have a moment alone together…and that moment is here, but so is the ocean, so is the moon. Louis isn’t sure why all of this has him second-guessing himself, but it does. It's been a very long time since he felt so much for someone, and he’s afraid to fuck it up. 

“Louis,” Harry breathes, swimming a bit further out, until he’s treading water. “What are you thinking?” 

Louis follows him, lets the wake carry him close enough that they’re regarding each other, illuminated in electric blue, close enough that their faces are level and Louis can make out the little crow’s feet beside Harry's eyes, made from the creases when he laughs. “That….fuck. I want to touch you,” he sighs. “And m’not sure that it’s okay.” 

Harry lets out a shuddering breath, lips the most gorgeous, astounding shape as he exhales, mouth dripping. “It’s all that I can think about,” he confesses. 

And that’s enough to break Louis, who’s already so very fragile. He takes Harry’s face between his own palms and kisses his wet, lovely mouth, licking into it, stealing his salt. Harry gasps and surges against him, and, _fuck_ , it’s so _wet_ , the tide and his hot, sharp body, skin ocean-slick and maddening against him. 

The waves, however gentle, push them off balance, so Louis digs his feet into the sea floor, anchoring himself while Harry fucking _climbs him_ , grinds against his leg, and ruts into him so hard that they both nearly topple. Louis bites his lip and swallows the filthy sounds being wrenched out of him. “God, you’re desperate, you’re starved for it,” he marvels, as much to himself in reassurance as it is to Harry, who whines in response. 

“Wanted you for a long time,” Harry slurs, licking up Louis’s neck, hot and dirty. Then he palms down his back, just _feeling_ , groping him under the water. “God,” he groans, as he gets two hungry fistfuls of Louis’s ass. “You’re so insanely fit.” 

Louis is distracted, stomach dropping as Harry mauls all over his bum, gripping him and splitting him and kneading him, breath huffing out in messy exhalations all over his throat. He wants so many _things_ , wants to give Harry everything that he’s ever fantasized about, wants to indulge him, spoil him. It’s giving him such a dizzy head rush just to _feel_ how badly Harry wants it, _needs_ it, how drunk and starving he is for his skin. Louis arches his back, pushing himself into those greedy palms, pulling Harry’s head up off his shoulder so that he can kiss him deeply, fuck his mouth open with his tongue. “God, you’re unreal, _love_ how badly you want it,” Louis praises in between kisses. The ocean laps up against them, warm from the way that they're burning up, and Louis’s surprised to feel how _hard_ they both are, cocks trapped between their bellies as they grind together. “Can I touch you? Here?” Louis asks, digging his thumb into the almost nonexistent space between them, on Harry’s thigh, close to his dick. He doesn’t want to peel back and allow for more room, doesn’t want cold water to touch them, doesn’t want anything but Harry’s body against his, the slow, filthy rut of it against him. 

“Oh, god, please,” Harry whimpers, licking his swollen lips. 

Louis forces his hand between them and wraps his fingers around Harry’s length, biting Harry’s shoulder as he does it, _hard_ , because he wants him to know what it _does_ to him, how fucking _good_ it feels to hold his cock, to slide his fist down the hot length of it. “Fuck, baby, so big, so good,” he groans, mouth open and panting against Harry’s ear, heat coiling up in his stomach as Harry keens at the praise. “Unbelievable...can’t wait to feel it in my mouth, to choke on you. You’re gonna be a stretch for me, so fucking thick, Harry, _god_ ,” he tells him, working his hand up and down, wrist cramped and aching already. The pain of it feels far away, though, insignificant because Harry feels so fucking _good_ , bucking into his fist, working his hips against Louis and moving so shamelessly, so desperately. And this is _here_ , in public, in the fucking _ocean_. Louis can't wait to get him in his private quarters, spread out on his bed, broken open and turned inside out and _begging_. Because he’s _certain_ that he can make his boy beg, that he can make him cry, get him to do whatever he wants. Harry’s pliant and easy, already twitching against his palm, flexing in a way that lets Louis know that he’s close. “Look at you, fuck. You’re gonna come for me, aren’t you, gonna come right here in my hand, all over me,” he babbles into his ear, one hand sunk wrist-deep into his tangled, wet curls. “Most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever had.” 

“Jesus,” Harry whines, hips locking up before he circles them, fucking Louis’s fist. “I love…love being talked to. Love that you’re talking dirty to me, m’so turned on,” he whimpers, rubbing his face into Louis’s shoulder, shaking all over. “Your voice is so _hot_ , Louis, love your voice,” he adds, and something about that sends needles of heat into Louis’s gut. _God_ , he’s fallen so _quickly_ , he’s so gone that nothing makes sense but this, Harry Styles shimmering in a blue glow, begging for him. 

“Yeah?” he breathes, tongue flicking out over the soft, tender spot just under Harry’s ear before he bites down at the hinge of his jaw, sucking hard enough to leave a mark. He pulls away with a wet smack and moves his hand faster, making wet, obscene sounds in the water between them. “You like it when I tell you how good you look, how fucking gorgeous you are? How big and pretty your cock is, _fuck_ , Harry, fills up my hand so perfectly, you were meant to be here...to be mine,” he whispers, feeling so _mad_ , so dizzy, and right there, Harry tenses up, gasping, twitching, and Louis can hardly believe how remarkable it feels. “Harry, fuck, come for me, baby, please,” he tells him, and Harry sobs into his shoulder and lets himself go, hips rolling. 

He comes so _much_ , just pulse after pulse spilling over Louis’s fist, so much that he’s _stunned_ by it, _hungry_ at the sharp, organic smell of him in the air, resting above the salt-wind. Louis gathers it with a shaking hand, swirling the remainder in the glowing water, totally in awe. “Fuck,” Harry gasps, trembling. “That was so fast.” 

“ _So_ fast, and you came _so much_ , you’re so _brilliant_ , so beautiful. My good boy,” Louis praises, and he might be worried that it was too much if Harry wasn’t still kissing messily all over his neck, and if he wasn’t so fucking hard himself, throbbing under the tentative splay of Harry’s palm. 

“Can I?” Harry asks, voice low, and Louis nods, moved. “I’ve dreamed about this,” Harry admits then, thumbing over the crown, smearing precum into the warm eddies of ocean between their bodies. “Touching you. Making you feel good.” 

“Thought about touching my prick? ” Louis asks through grit teeth as Harry just _plays_ with him, idle and teasing now that his own urgency is gone, now that he’s already come. 

“Yes,” Harry sighs, pressing a lingering kiss to Louis’s collarbone. “And sucking it. Mostly sucking it. Can’t wait to get on my knees for you,” he whispers, and Louis curses, cock twitching in overwhelm in the heat of Harry’s palm. 

“I see, Lieutenant,” he jokes, and Harry gasps, squeezing him punishingly. 

“Heeey,” he whines, curling his fingers around Louis’s length and pumping, hand so big and and firm and hot that Louis nearly whites out at the sudden intentional pressure. “Be nice.” 

_M’nice. Feels nice,_ Louis thinks, but he doesn’t say it because he’s forgotten how to speak, all he knows is that he wants to taste Harry again, wants that lovely, impossible mouth, so he tilts his head up to get it, kissing Harry once, twice before they’re snogging again, tongues swirling, filthy and wet. He tastes like salt and fire and sun and _home_ , a home that Louis wants to make, a home he hasn’t even let himself imagine, before this. He fucks up into Harry’s hand, hissing into his mouth, totally consumed by him being everywhere as Harry jacks him off, steady and solid, until he comes with a yelp. 

They stand like that for a long time, arms around each other’s bodies while the ocean rolls by them, wave after wave, too soft to break. It licks around them, warm and full of light, and Louis catches his breath, shivering each time Harry presses a kiss into his shoulder, his temple, his wet hair. “I love you,” Louis admits while he’s still in this haze, while everything still feels only partially real. “Think s’too early to say something entirely mad like that?” 

Harry makes a wordless sound, soft and awed and grateful, and says, “No,” quiet and soft, just warm air against Louis’s brow. “I love you, too. So, we’re both mad, I guess.” 

“Better this way, then,” Louis smiles against his slick skin. “S’better if we both go down in the crash. No survivors, and all that.

Harry laughs, and the wondrous rumble resounds through both of them as they hold each other so close that there’s no room for distinction. 

 

Epilogue 

—-

When they wake up the next morning (on a simple cot in Niall’s guest room, Louis’s whiskery chin nestled between his shoulder blades and his top arm slung loose and heavy over Harry’s ribcage, like all of him was meant to fit here, always), there’s fruit and fresh bread and something like coffee, only less bitter and more opaque. Harry and Louis sit at the edge of their cot, shirtless and bleary-eyed while Niall, who’s clearly a morning person, talks jovially about how the repairs on their shuttle are nearly complete, and they’ll likely be able to contact the Pegasus and fly close enough to get pulled in by a tractor beam, at the very least. 

Harry’s _incredibly_ relieved, so much so that he gets choked up and shaky at the news, tilting into Louis, who rubs his back in comforting little circles and repeatedly thanks Niall for all his help. It feels insanely good, the grounding pressure of Louis’s hand, like something anchoring him, keeping him still. Niall explains more of the details as he and Louis talk shop, and Harry sits there, neck-deep in a sort of paralyzing wonder. They _made_ it. No one died, no one was even seriously injured. Maybe he didn’t get those soil samples, and maybe he’s not the best commanding officer the fleet’s ever had, but it was his _first time_ as the senior officer on an away mission, and no one was expecting the level of unexpected mishaps that befell them. He rescued Louis, he made _successful first contact_ with an alien race, and all the while, he honored the prime directive. He supposes this means that he’s not _that_ terrible at command. In fact, he might even be alright at it. He smiles sleepily into Louis’s arm as he thumbs under Harry’s shoulder blade, feeling out a knot. Doesn’t mean that he wants to do it ever again, though. This might be his last time in command, and Harry’s okay with that. 

They take turns heaping gratitude on Niall all the way back to the crash site, Harry stumbling occasionally because his balance still feels off from the ring of phaser fire echoing in the cave, from the feeling of Louis’s ocean-slick, fire-hot skin pressed up against him. The sunlight is so bright, brighter than he remembers it from the last two days, as if getting stuck here and finding Louis and then _losing_ Louis and finding him again somehow cleared a preternatural cloud-haze, and now everything’s brighter, unfiltered. His eyes water in the glare, and all he can feel is amazed. Amazed by the sunlight, amazed that their ship has been repaired, amazed by Ensign Louis Tomlinson, who keeps laughing with his head thrown back as he walks alongside Niall, eyes reduced to slits, face a mess of lines and crow’s feet and white, flashing teeth. He’s the most lovely and impossible thing, how real he is. Not only possible, but close enough to reach out and _touch_. 

So at some point, Harry decides to touch him. Sidles up alongside him and smooths his fingers down the inside of his arm, loosely linking their fingers, sweat-damp and warm. “Oh! Hello, love,” Louis says easily, turning to smile at Harry and squeeze his hand. “You need some water? Niall here has this fancy gourd-like canteen...m’thinking if they kick us out of the fleet or something, we can just come right back here, to this planet. I really love the whole engineers-turned-farmers thing they’ve got going on.” 

Niall bursts into laughter, slapping his knee. 

“You’d farm with me? Did I make a plant lover out of you?” Harry jokes, thumbing over Louis’s knuckles. _A garden here or in London or in the window of my quarters, under a heat lamp overlooking the stars. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re here to plant the seeds with me._

“Yeah, some kind of lover,” Louis whispers, and then he beams, so much so that Harry feels like he can feel the heat from it, burning into him. There’s nothing left to do but beam back. 

—-

Louis is _beyond_ impressed, really, that the ship is in working order. He sits at the com, shaking his head over and over again, like doing so might make it easier to process the fact that these alien engineers who swore off technology could just…fix a Starfleet shuttlecraft overnight, like it was nothing. “I’m serious about moving here,” he says to Harry and Niall, tilting back in the (repaired) chair and looking up at them with pleading eyes. “I hate space, and I hate the transporter. I could really get behind _living off the land_ , giving back to the earth, all of that. Like, s’remakable you lot can _do_ this and just choose not to.” 

Harry squeezes his shoulder, smiling down at him, and the honey of that smile is enough to render Louis silent for a moment. “Let’s at least _go back_ to the Pegasus and see if we’ve been demoted. Who knows, maybe they’ll be impressed? We did have successful diplomatic negotiations with the natives.” 

Niall shrugs. “I’ll say. You two vastly improved my opinion of the Federation, anyway.” 

“We’ll put in a good word for you, too, you know,” Louis tells him, remembering that this _is_ first contact with an alien species, no matter how friendly and familiar Niall and his people seem. There’s protocol. “And if you’re interested in joining, or if you want back up regarding your situation here, or even if you want us to help you figure out some sort of, I dunno, peace treaty with the folks who kidnapped me…the Federation would be happy to help you out.” 

Harry snorts. “Ensign Tomlinson, getting it all in before you’re kicked out of the fleet?” he teases, grinning so hard that he has a dimple on _both_ sides, not just the one, which means Louis is _doubly_ lucky to have fallen in love with someone so…so. Goofy and radiant and kind and, and, and...every other good thing there is in the world. “I outrank him, just so you know,” Harry says to Niall then, and maybe they’re being unprofessional, but Louis can’t _care_ anymore. Not when his future looks so different, so full of light. 

“Well, I would love for you to patch me through to your captain when you get up there. And speaking of good words, I could probably put one in for you two as well, if you need it,” Niall winks before making a flourish with his hand that falls somewhere between a wave and a salute, and Louis doesn’t need the universal translator to know that it roughly translates to _goodbye, until next time, and thank you_. He and Harry mimic it as best they can. “I put a communications signal into your tricorder log, so you should be able to communicate with the surface, no deflections, once you’re on the ship. Let us know that you got there safely. My people and I, we’ll be watching the sky to make sure that there are no…irregular energy fluctuations, if you know what I mean.” 

“I appreciate it,” Louis says. “And thank you for everything.” 

Once Niall is gone, Harry turns to him, lips wet, hair pulled back from his face. It sort of knocks the breath out of Louis, so he’s already dizzy when Harry leans into kiss him, deep and hot and lingering. When he pulls away, Louis’s hands are shaking where they’re clasped on the com. “Erm,” he squeaks, shaking his head, his smile sharp and reflexive. “What was that for?” 

“Nothing in particular. I just…I can do it whenever I want to now, so m’gonna,” Harry explains, smiling. “Are you gonna get us out of here, by the way? Or go native and move in with Niall?” 

“I never really got a chance to prove to you what an excellent pilot I am,” Louis sighs, “so I suppose I’ll fly us back.” 

“We can see how they feel about this mission...if we’re gonna get promoted or kicked out,” Harry mutters, even though he doesn’t seem much like he cares what their fate is, either way.

“Whatever it is,” Louis says, reaching over to squeeze Harry’s hand, “S’fine. As long as I get to be with you.” _Better if we both go down in the crash. No survivors, and all that_ , he thinks, and the flash of Harry's smile, so sharp and bright and wonderful, tells him that he's there, too. Following Louis into space or back down to Terran Earth. Wherever he chooses to go. 

Louis powers up the communications channel and opens a subspace relay to the Pegasus with his free hand, the other still clasped, sticky and flat-palmed, to Harry’s. “Take me home?” Harry asks, kissing his knuckles. “Wherever that may be?” 

_Here, here, here_ , Louis thinks, eyes fluttering shut at the soft brush of Harry’s lips against his. _Here with you_. 

END


End file.
